Ideas for Google Summer of Code

• Tools to improve interoperability — with stuff like SFST, VISLCG, ...

Task

Either to modify Apertium to accept different formats, to modify the other tools to accept the Apertium format, or alternatively write some kind of generic "glue" code that converts between them.

Rationale

There is a lot of great free software that could be used with the Apertium engine. For example the Stuttgart FST (SFST) tools for morphological analysis/generation could be used in place of lttoolbox, and the constraint grammars from VISL could be used in place of apertium-tagger. Unfortunately these, along with many other tools have incompatible input/output formats.

Programming requirements

Knowledge of C, C++

Linguistic requirements

None really, but anything is better than nothing.

• Automatic accent and diacritic insertion

Task

Create an optional module to restore diacritics and accents on incoming text.

Rationale

Many languages use diacritics and accents in normal writing, and Apertium is designed to use these, however in some places, especially for example. instant messaging, irc etc. these are often not used or untyped. This causes problems as for the engine, traduccion is not the same as traducción.

Programming requirements

Knowledge of C, C++

Linguistic requirements

Be familiar with the issues surrounding accents and diacritics.

• Windows, Mac OS/X port

• Lexical selection module (WSD)

• Interfaces -- OpenOffice, Firefox, Evolution, Thunderbird, Gaim, ...