NLP++
The NLP++ Logo | |
Paradigms | Natural Language Processing |
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Designed by | Amnon Meyers David de Hilster |
Developer | Text Analysis International |
First appeared | Template:Start date and age |
Template:Infobox software/simple | |
Typing discipline | Static, nominative, partially inferred |
Platform | Cross Platform |
OS | Most major |
Filename extensions | .pat, .nlp, .seq, .txxt, .kb |
Website |
www |
NLP++ is a computer language specifically designed for processing unstructured or semi-unstructured text and includes the NLP++ language, as well as the Conceptual Grammar, a hierarchical knowledge base. NLP++ works in conjunction with the Integrated Development Environment VisualText.
Contents
Overview
NLP++ was designed to build text analyzers that read and process text like human readers combining an island-driven, bottom up sequential pattern matching with a hierarchical knowledge base called the conceptual grammar. NLP++ can dynamically build knowledge and use stored knowledge in order to aid in the task of understanding written text.
NLP++
NLP++ is a computer language that includes rules and functions that specifically relate to processing text files.
Conceptual Grammar
VisualText
History
The roots of NLP++ come from its two creators, Amnon Meyers and David de Hilster who are computer programmers working in the area of natural language processing since the early 1980s.
Amnon Meyers
Amnon Meyers worked on previous systems including Vox and the conceptual grammar ... blah blah blah
David de Hilster
David de Hilster developed island-driven pattern matching rules first in LISP, then in C for the commercial product NLQuery from Battelle Memorial Institute. In the late 1980s, de Hilster developed Verbo, a natural language query system for databases in Portuguese.
Collaboration
In 1990, David de Hilster was hired into the Artificial Intelligence group at McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach California where he met Amnon and was tasked to move Amnon's Vox program to C++. The two collaborated, combining the island-driven parsing with the conceptual grammar and coming up with TexUS. Their system was used in the Message Understanding Conferences sponsored by Darp in the early 1990s and they placed third among the participants which included MIT, SRI, Carnegie Mellon among others.
In the mid 1990s, the two moved to the Aritifical Intelligence Group at Space Park at TRW where the two continued their collaboration, with de Hilster's work inspiring the creation of a new company ISearch which electronically processed resumes. In 1997, de Hilster was hired by ISearch to move their text processing system to the C language.
In 1998, Meyers secured funding from friends and family to start Text Analysis International which eventually lured de Hilster to join where the two created and formalized NLP++ and VisualText. The product was privately owned technology which was then offered to companies who were looking to process text.
Open Source
In December of 2018, NLP++ went open source. The company Text Analysis International was desolved and it was moved to an open source MIT license by creators Amnon Meyers and David de Hilster.
NLP Engine
The NLP engine is a C++ class and executable. It currently compiles on linux and will be available on windows and mac Os in the near future.
VisualText
The original VisualText interface was written for Windows and is available as a free download from the VisualText website.
The latest beta version is VSCode language extension which runs cross platform. It is planned to be officially launch in the first quarter of 2021.