Become a language pair developer for Apertium

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This is a 3-part, step-by-step guide on how to use a development version of Apertium to make a change in a language pair. These instructions assume that you are using Ubuntu or Debian; if not then please see the Installation page for instructions for other OS's such as Mac OS X or Windows.

Getting Ready

There are 2 options as to how you can get Apertium. You can use either the Terminal to get the most up-to-date versions and the ability to commit your changes, or if you are interested in making a change for personal use the Synaptic Package Manager can be used to get development versions that aren't quite up-to-date and don't have the ability to use your changes on newer versions of Apertium.

Step 1: Get the Prerequisites

A development version of Apertium and the language pair you want to change has to be installed on your computer first before you can change something about the language pair.

Start by opening a new Terminal.

Then, use this command to install the prerequisites: 

sudo apt-get install subversion build-essential g++ pkg-config gawk libxml2 \
> libxml2-dev libxml2-utils xsltproc flex automake autoconf libtool libpcre3-dev

The Terminal will then ask you for your password to begin.

Note: Keep track of how you type your password in your head. The Terminal will not display characters entered for your password for security reasons.

After you have entered your password, press the "Enter" key and wait for your computer to download and install the packages.

Step 2: Get Apertium, lttoolbox, and Your Language Pair(s)

Using the same Terminal, you can download the entire language pairs tree from SVN using the command: 

svn co https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium

Keep in mind that the full tree is over 4GB. If you have a slow connection, limited disk space, or a limited data transfer amount, installing the whole tree is not recommended. However, if you want to focus on a small number of language pairs you can easily download and add language pairs with a command such as: 

svn co https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/<modulename>

Note: This command only downloads one module at a time. For a more complete set of instructions on effectively using SVN, see the Using SVN page.


In the area where it says <modulename>, you can replace this with the module that you want to use such as the Spanish/English module.

These next commands download Apertium, lttoolbox, and the language pair that you want to use. 

svn co http://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/lttoolbox
svn co http://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/apertium
svn co https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/<modulename>


For example, if you wanted to get Apertium, lttoolbox, and the Spanish/English module you could enter: 

svn co http://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/lttoolbox
svn co http://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/apertium
svn co https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/apertium-en-es

Note: You can find a full list of modules at https://apertium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/apertium/trunk/.

MORE TO COME

Changing Things Around

When you want to make a change in Apertium, you more than likely want to add a word to an existing language pair.

IMPORTANT: Adding a word won't do you any good if you don't recompile the modules after the change is made. Simply use the Terminal like before and enter: make <modulenamehere> and press the "Enter" key and your computer will create the new files necessary.


There are 3 major steps in adding a new word to a language pair:

1. Add an entry to the dictionary for the first language that will be used.

2. Add an entry to the bilingual dictionary for the pair.

3. Add an entry to the dictionary for the second language that will be used.

You will need to find the module you want to work with on your computer and open the three dictionaries; for example: apertium-es-ca.es.dix, apertium-es-ca.es-ca.dix, and apertium-es-ca.ca.dix. Note: Each dictionary will have the suffix ".dix" You should open these files in a text editor or specialized XML editor.

Step 1: Adding to the First Dictionary

IN PROGRESS

Show it to the World

IN PROGRESS

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