UI layout

The Web UI that comes with MAT is a rich, logging-enabled tool for viewing, processing and annotating your documents. We describe how to use it here.

The file menu

Loading and viewing files in file mode

The "Load document" dialog
The file mode document window
The advance/retreat controls
The legend

The Tabs menu
The View menu
The Help menu
The logging button

We assume that you've started the Web server and loaded the UI.

The file menu

The file menu looks like this:

[file menu]

The six things you can do from this menu are:

Each of these operations brings up a dialog so you can proceed. In this section, we'll focus on simple span annotation in file mode, accessible via "Open file...".

Loading and viewing files in file mode

The "Load document" dialog

When you select "File -> Open file...", you'll be presented with the following dialog:

[load document dialog]

The "Task" menu will be active, and the "Language", "Workflow" and "Input" elements will be disabled. Once you select an item from the "Task" menu, the "Language" menu will be enabled; once you select a language, the "Workflow" menu will be enabled; once you select a workflow, the "Input" element will be enabled. If MAT knows of only one element for the task, language or workflow, those elements will be automatically selected for you.

The workflows are established in your task configuration file. Choose the workflow that's appropriate for what you're going to do. E.g., in the "Named Entity" task:

"Demo" allows you to hand tag, autotag and correct documents
"Tokenless hand annotation" allows you to hand annotate, without tokenization
"Review/repair" allows you to correct documents

In addition to those, the "Workflow" menu allows you to open a document read-only, and to open a reconciliation or comparison document:

[file menu with workflow]

Select the appropriate document type and encoding for the document. If the document is a raw document, select "raw" from the "Document type" menu; or, select "mat-json" for rich annotated documents in the MAT JSON format (other document types will also be available). The encoding for MAT JSON documents will be fixed as utf-8. You also have the option of providing an optional memo, which will be echoed in the "Tabs" menu and the document title bar. Once you've filled out the appropriate elements, the "Open" button will be enabled:

[load document open]

If you press the "Open" button, the dialog will vanish and you'll see a new tab in the upper left region of your window, and the task-related information about your document will appear in the upper right region.

The file mode document window

At this point, your UI will look like this:

The tab contains the basename of the document, and the hand annotation status is shown above the document text, below the tab (here, it says "Hand annotation unavailable"). At the right end of the title tab, there are two icons. The "-" hides the document, and the "x" closes it; you can make a hidden document visible again using the "Tabs" menu.

In the upper right region, you see the task controls on top, with a more complete description of the document name, the workflow menu, and a sequence of steps. The advance/retreat controls appear immediately below the steps; the "Reload" button allows you to reload the document. Below the task controls is the tag legend.

The "up" arrow to the right of the "Controls" and "Legend" labels allows you to contract that section of the task information.

When there's an active tab, the "File -> Save..." submenu is enabled:

[raw plus menu]

This menu allows you to save the document in various formats. Note: if you're having trouble finding the document you saved, please keep in mind that the browser, not the MAT UI, is responsible for saving your file. In particular, if you haven't configured your browser to prompt you for where to save your file, it will be saved to your browser's download directory. To fix this in Firefox, see the documentation on starting the UI.

The advance/retreat controls

The advance/retreat controls govern how you move through your workflow. The iconography for advancement is intended to be consistent:

a gear indicates automated annotation through an engine in the MAT backend
a hand with a writing utensil in it indicates the availability of hand annotation
a right arrow presents the facility to complete the current step

The retreat buttons should also be consistent (these buttons will be available if your workflow is marked undoable="yes"):

a left arrow on its own button presents the facility to undo the current step (if it's partially done) or the previous step (if nothing has been done in the current step)
a left arrow on a button with the drawing hand presents the facility to retreat into the hand annotation phase of the previous step

There are many different possible patterns, depending on which type of step you're in, and where you are in the step (if it has multiple phases):

step type	what's been done in the step	which buttons you'll see	what you can do	what the buttons do
auto	(all circumstances)	a button with a gear + right arrow	press the button	press to apply the automated step in the MAT backend
hand	(all circumstances)	a button with a writing hand + right arrow	hand annotation	press to indicate that you've completed hand annotation
auto-with-correction	nothing	a button with a gear, and a grayed-out button with a writing hand + right arrow	press the button	press to apply the automated step in the MAT backend
auto-with-correction	some annotation	a grayed-out button with a gear, and a button with a writing hand + right arrow	hand annotation	press to indicate that you've completed hand annotation
mixed	nothing	a button with a gear, in parentheses, and a button with a writing hand + right arrow	press the gear button, or hand annotation	press the gear button to apply the automated step in the MAT backend, or press the hand button to indicate that you've completed annotation for this step
mixed	some annotation	a grayed-out button with a gear, in parentheses, and a button with a writing hand + right arrow	hand annotation	press to indicate that you've completed annotation for this step

In the initial screen above, the "zone" step is an auto step, so you see a button with a gear + right arrow. Below, we'll see some of the other button configurations.

If you hover over one of the buttons, it will tell you what it does; e.g., if you hover over the button in the initial screen above, it'll say "Apply zone".

The legend

The legend lists the various content annotation sets and annotation labels, and also allows you to control these annotation sets and labels in various ways. In general, annotations which can be added and modified in a given step can be active, inactive, or selected, and all annotations can be invisible. Here's what each of these settings means:

setting	availability	what it means
Active	annotation labels and sets in steps which add or modify the relevant sets	The label (or all the labels in the set) will be available in the annotation popup menu for addition to the document. This is the default setting for this case.
Inactive	annotation labels and sets in steps which add or modify the relevant sets	The label (or all the labels in the set) will not be available for addition, even though the step adds or modifies them. The "Inactive" setting on an individual label takes precedence over the setting on the set which contains that label.
Invisible	all content labels and sets in all steps	The annotations bearing the label (or any of the labels in the set) will not be rendered in the annotation pane. The "Invisible" setting takes precedence over all other settings, either at the set or individual label level.
Selected	annotation labels (but not sets) in steps which add or modify the set which contains the label	When an annotation creation gesture is made in the annotation pane, an annotation of the selected label will be created immediately, rather than an annotation popup menu being presented.
Visible	annotation labels and sets in steps which do not add or modify the relevant sets	The annotations bearing the label (or any of the labels in the set) will be rendered in the annotation pane. This is the default setting for this case.

In the initial screen above, the "zone" step doesn't add or modify any content annotations, so all the annotation label controls are "Visible".

The Tabs menu

The Tabs menu looks like this:

This menu is initially blank. It lists all tabs which have been opened and not closed. If you select a tab in this menu, the UI will display the tab (if it's hidden), and make it the active tab (if it isn't). You can hide tabs by pressing the "-" button at the right end of the tab, and make them visible again using this menu.

The View menu

The View menu allows you to modify the behavior of the UI. Its various options are described here.

The Help menu

The Help menu looks like this:

The "Documentation" item will open a new tab or window containing this documentation; the "About MAT" item will show a small popup window which shows the MAT version number.

The logging button

As you can see from the images above, the menubar contains an item labeled "Logging is off (press to start)". If you press that button, your UI will look like this:

At this point, the logger is enabled. This log captures a wide range of timestamped UI gestures. If you press the button again, the browser stops logging, and downloads a CSV log of your interaction, whose format is described here.