===============================================================================
ABL README
================================================================================

Alignment-Based Learning (ABL) is a symbolic grammar inference
framework that has succesfully been applied for several unsupervised
machine learning tasks in Natural Language Processing (NLP).  Given
sequences of symbols only, a system that implements ABL induces
structure by aligning and comparing the input sequences.  As a result,
the input sequences are augmented with the induced structure.  For more
information, see the reference list at the end of this file.

This package contains a C++ implementation of ABL.  It is maintained
by:

   Menno van Zaanen (mvzaanen@uvt.nl)

The latest version of this package can be found on:

   http://ilk.uvt.nl/~menno/research/software/abl

For any questions, remarks, bugs, improvements, or any other matters
of concern about this package, send an email to: mvzaanen@uvt.nl


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT FILES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please read the following before using this ABL package:

LICENCE     : conditions and terms for using this software
INSTALL     : information on installing this software


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REQUIREMENTS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ABL package should run on any standard UNIX based platform.  It
requires a C++ compiler (> GCC 3.0).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ABL package was developed by Menno van Zaanen (Tilburg University,
The Netherlands) and Jeroen Geertzen (University of Cambridge, UK).
The project was partially supported financially with a grant from
Macquarie University, Australia.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1]   "Bootstrapping Structure into Language: Alignment-Based Learning",
      Menno van Zaanen, 2001,
      PhD Thesis, School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK.

[2]   "Implementing Alignment-Based Learning",
      Menno van Zaanen, 2002,
      In: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Grammatical 
      Inference (ICGI), pp 312-314, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

[3]   "String alignment in grammatical inference: what suffix trees can do",
      Jeroen Geertzen, 2003,
      Technical report ILK-0311, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

$Id: README 3755 2010-02-19 11:23:46Z menno $