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LkbFos
A new, fully open source version of the LKB ('LKB-FOS' for short) is now available. This is based on the 'classic' version of the LKB that has been developed over the past several years in Franz Allegro CL, but with the major difference that it is not dependent on any proprietary compilers, runtime environments or code libraries. The source code is in the DELPH-IN public repository http://svn.delph-in.net/lkb/branches/fos/. For convenience, precompiled binaries for macOS and Linux can be downloaded from lkb_fos.tgz [101.8 MB]. A Windows binary may be available at some point in the future.
LKB-FOS has been developed using the tools and libraries SBCL, McCLIM and SLIME (replacing Franz Allegro CL, CLIM and ELI respectively). See the following sections for installation and usage instructions.
To install LKB-FOS:
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Create a top-level directory to hold the DELPH-IN software and resources. Good choices for this directory are ~/delphin on Linux or ~/Documents/delphin on macOS. So that DELPH-IN software can find the associated resources, set the environment variable DELPHINHOME to this directory; you can do this with a command such as
export DELPHINHOME=~/delphin. Also add this command to your shell initialization file. On Linux this file is ~/.bashrc if you are using the default, bash shell. On macOS, for DELPHINHOME to be correctly set when you start the LKB via emacs or by double clicking, you should set this variable in your ~/.bash_profile file, not in ~/.bashrc. -
The LKB needs a writable directory to store its temporary files. On Linux, this is ~/tmp/, and on macOS ~/Documents/tmp/. Create this directory if it does not already exist.
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Download the LKB-FOS binary archive (link above) and unpack the files inside your directory $DELPHINHOME, which will create a new directory $DELPHINHOME/lkb_fos. If you use this precompiled binary version of LKB-FOS, you do not need to install SBCL, McCLIM or SLIME.
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In order to use [incr tsdb()] functionality (only on Linux at present), the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH must include the LKB-FOS shared library directory $DELPHINHOME/lkb_fos/lib/linux.x86.64. The following Unix command should accomplish this (it can go in your ~/.bash_profile file or ~/.profile file, as appropriate).
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DELPHINHOME/lkb_fos/lib/linux.x86.64:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH -
[Linux only] LKB-FOS requires the Unix application xclip, which is not installed by default in all Linux distributions; in Ubuntu, to download and install it you can run the command
sudo apt-get install xclip.
[macOS only] LKB-FOS requires the open source application XQuartz; if you don't already have XQuartz, download it from https://www.xquartz.org and install it.
The LKB-FOS binary for Linux is lkb.linux_x86_64.
The LKB-FOS binary for macOS Intel architecture is lkb.darwin_x86_64, and for M1 architecture it is lkb.darwin_arm64. You can run the appropriate binary by typing its name in the Terminal application or in an xterm hosted by XQuartz. Alternatively, to start the LKB without going through the Unix command line, you can just double click the LKB.app application – if that gives an error message then check the 'Problems' section below. Aquamacs http://aquamacs.org works well fo running LKB-FOS as a process inside emacs.
To run LKB-FOS inside emacs, put the following block of lines in the file ~/.emacs in your home directory.
(let ((root (or (getenv "DELPHINHOME") "~/delphin")))
(load (format "%s/lkb_fos/emacs/dot.emacs" root) nil t t))
Then, when emacs has started up, the following keystrokes will start
LKB-FOS: Meta-x lkb RET
Porting the LKB to an open source foundation has provided an opportunity to make some improvements to its code base. In addition, the use of a different underlying Lisp system (SBCL with McCLIM rather than Allegro CL and its native CLIM implementation) gives advantages in the areas of speed of processing, multilingual support, and visual appearance. Improved features include:
- Dialogs: these have been reimplemented to improve their appearance, and a user-friendly file selector dialog has been added.
- Parser local ambiguity packing: this was previously turned off by
default, resulting in even moderately long or ambiguous sentences
over-running the chart edge limit. A couple of minor
packing/unpacking issues have been resolved and packing is now
turned on by default. To revert to the previous behaviour, execute
(setq *chart-packing-p* nil) - Multilingual support: SBCL has excellent support for Unicode and McCLIM works well for Unicode output, so LKB-FOS can work with grammars using any language script.
Experienced LKB users might notice further refinements:
- Responsive window resizing (file selector dialogs and parse trees windows reformat their contents when they are resized).
- More informative window titles, able to display any Unicode character.
- Info line in tree windows, showing details of the currently selected tree or tree node.
- Type hierarchy display that includes a target type's ancestors as well as descendants, can be zoomed in and out, and can also show type constraints.
- Much faster GLB computation for large type hierarchies.
- Major speed improvements in the user interface, and also in parsing and generation.
- Fixes the type hierarchy processing bug in LkbBugs, and incorporates some of the suggestions in LkbWishlist.
- Implements the new TdlRfc specification of TDL syntax.
- Adds a handy command 'Evaluate Lisp expression...' to the Lkb Top Advanced menu.
LKB-FOS supports the Linguistic User Interface (LUI): see the
LkbLui pages for information on installing and using the LUI.
Execute the Lisp expressions (lui-initialize) and (lui-shutdown) to
enable and disable it, respectively; alternatively set the environment
variable LUI. The LUI executable is expected to be on the user's PATH.
On Linux, LKB-FOS includes [incr tsdb()]. To open the
'podium' window, execute the Lisp expression (tsdb:tsdb :podium).
Refer to the README file for a detailed, up-to-date list of bug fixes and new features.
Text fields in dialogs do not respond to mouse or trackpad gestures (clicking / dragging), but expect keyboard commands using the arrow keys, backspace key and standard emacs key bindings. Useful commands for text fields are:
Ctrl-space: set mark
Esc-B / Esc-F: go backwards / forwards one word
Esc-Backspace / Esc-D: delete previous / next word
Ctrl-A Ctrl-K: a quick two-command combination to clear the text field
In addition, the following commands access the OS clipboard:
Ctrl-C: copy to clipboard the text between cursor and mark
Ctrl-X: cut to clipboard the text between cursor and mark
Ctrl-V: paste from clipboard at cursor
Ctrl-Z: undo the last change
For interactive input, on macOS the Input Sources menu can be used to switch between language scripts, and the Keyboard Viewer provides convenient multilingual text entry. For output, the LKB requires a Unicode-compatible font. There is no font substitution: all characters to be displayed have to be in the selected sans-serif and monospace fonts.
Suitable Unicode fonts are DejaVu Sans (attractive, and covering many language scripts), Code2000 (less attractive, but with even better coverage), or WenQuanYi Zen Hei (reasonably attractive, with full CJK coverage). (On macOS, these are not standard fonts so you will have to download them yourself - put them in /opt/X11/share/fonts/TTF/ - having first installed XQuartz). To select DejaVu Sans, use the following Unix command:
cat > ~/.fonts.conf <<!
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<fontconfig>
<dir>/opt/X11/share/fonts/TTF</dir>
<alias>
<family>sans-serif</family>
<prefer>
<family>DejaVu Sans</family>
<family>Code2000</family>
<family>WenQuanYi Zen Hei</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>monospace</family>
<prefer>
<family>DejaVu Sans Mono</family>
<family>Code2000</family>
<family>WenQuanYi Zen Hei</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>
!
You can verify that DejaVu Sans is selected by running the Unix commands
fc-match sans
fc-match mono
The output of these commands should be
DejaVuSans.ttf: "DejaVu Sans" "Book"
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"
You can then start up the LKB and it will use these fonts. Note that if you want to input or output non-ASCII characters, you should make sure you are using a Unicode locale such as en_US.UTF-8.
If you are using the LKB on a high-DPI display, you might want to increase the size of text in menus and in dialog buttons and labels. You can do this by putting the following in your ~/.lkbrc file:
(setq clim:*default-text-style* (clim:make-text-style :sans-serif :roman 18))
To copy from a 'text-like' window such as Lkb Top or Scoped MRS, shift-drag across the text (or alternatively shift-left-click at one end of the text and shift-right-click at the other end). On macOS, you will then need to type Command-C – or select Copy from the XQuartz Edit menu – to get the text into the system clipboard. On Linux, all you need to do to paste the highlighted text is to click the middle mouse button.
In macOS 10.12 and upwards, the 'App Translocation' security feature prevents LKB.app from working properly the first time it is launched. To fix this, drag LKB.app to the Desktop and then back again. You may also need to authorise it in the General tab of Security & Privacy in System Preferences. These two steps should be enough to allow it to run.
Unanticipated errors may cause the LKB graphical interface to become
unresponsive. This is because the underlying Lisp system is expecting
the user to enter the debugger for that thread. If you are running the
LKB inside emacs, a debugger buffer should open automatically.
Otherwise, to enter the debugger manually, execute
(sb-thread:release-foreground) at the Lisp prompt. You can then type
backtrace to inspect the context of the error, and Ctrl-D to kill the
thread. The interface should then start responding again.
If you see a message like the following
error finding frame source: Bogus form-number: the source file has probably changed too much to
cope with.
this means that there was a previous error, and the error handler was not able to locate the LKB source code file containing the function that signalled that error (perhaps because you are running a precompiled binary). Ignore this error and look back in the system output for the original error message, e.g.
Syntax error at line 25204, character 2: In X_-_BRIDGE_LE, expected a documentation string after
double quote character, but did not find two further double quotes
Ignoring (part of) entry for X_-_BRIDGE_LE
If you encounter unexpected problems using LKB-FOS, please email the support address for the LKB (and other LinGO resources): lingo@delph-in.net.
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