# VIEW's Internal Structure

This document should help you get started with modifying VIEW's internals.

## The File Hierarchy

	view/trunk/
		desc/
		docs/
		lib/
		metadata/
		src/
		pom.xml
		INSTALL.markdown
		README.markdown
		TODO.tex
		WERTi.doxygen

## The UIMA Descriptor Files

All UIMA descriptor files are located in `desc/`, which has the following
layout:

	desc/
		annotators/
		enhancers/
		operators/
		testers/
		WERTiTypePriorities.xml
		WERTiTypeSystem.xml

The type system, which is global for all VIEW descriptors, is contained in
`WERTiTypeSystem.xml`.

All annotation on web content is performed by the descriptors in `annotators`.
This includes the two sub-categories `taggers` and `relevance`, for tagging and
relevance annotations respectively.

Different client side enhancement anchors are set up using the files in
`enhancers`.

`operators` contains aggregate descriptors to coordinate the work flow between
all other components.

Finally, `testers` are miscellaneous files used for testing. Feel free to add
your own.

## Documentation

The paper documenting the initial work on WERTi can be found in `docs/paper`.
Installation instructions and a readme are in the toplevel directory.

Javadocs and a complete API can be generated by calling the following command:

	mvn javadoc:javadoc

It will appear in `target/site/apidocs`.

## The Source Code

The source code has the following layout:

	src/
		main/
			java/
			resources/
			webapp/
		test/

The `test` directory *would* hold nice JUnit tests, but so far, none exist.
The `main` directory holds the Java sources, the resources VIEW needs to run
(the tagger model files, plus the source code of the Firefox add-on) and all 
files the webapp needs to run (WEB-INF/web.xml and logging properties). 
Anything accessible to the (server side) application at run time should go in 
the folder `webapp`.

## Compiling the Sources

The standard Maven targets will help you. Type `mvn compile` to compile and
`mvn clean` to delete any results of previous compilations. `mvn package`
creates the `.war` file to deploy on a server. It should contain everything,
including a set of model files and all libraries, which will make it incredibly
big.

Typically, you will not want to build the whole .war archive, as it is quite
big (at least 50 MB) and thus takes a while to build. You can instead use the
Maven webapp-plug in to create an 'exploded' archive, viz. the directory
structure and all files without actually packaging it, by issuing the command
`mvn war:exploded`

All compilation results are in the `target` folder.

#### Notes:

- Maven will typically search its repositories for updates and also for online
  sources of the lingpipe toolkit. You should let Maven do that from time to
  time, but for everyday compiles, the `-o` switch will prevent Maven from 
  going online, and thus speed up compilation quite a bit.

## Testing

### Tomcat
To test VIEW in hosted mode, you need to be running a Tomcat webserver.

#### **Important Note:**
You *need* to adjust `WERTi.properties`, too, to inform VIEW about what server
it is running on if you are not deploying it from this port and your local
machine.

### Logging

The logging configuration is in
`src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties`.