• Pros
  • Flexible/extensible. Most aspects of the program (including tagset) are customizable via xml files.
  • In-place annotation (doesn't change source files)
  • Stores data and annotations in xml files
  • Allows you to browse a list of annotations and jump to them in the text

• Cons
  • Seems designed for sparse annotation: not annotating each word with a static tagset
  • Slow mouse annotation
  • Interface is not intuitive

• Screenshots

Main Interface: right click to tag mmax2.jpg.png Configuration xml file: create tags mmax3.jpg.png

• Pros
  • Flexible. The interface allows you to define different classes and relationships among them (e.g. a Coref class might contain multiple Person classes).
  • Plugin for open source project Protege, so the platform it is written in is likely to be maintained

• Cons
  • Seems designed for sparse annotation
  • Slow mouse annotation

• Screenshots

Configuration: create class definitions knowtator1.jpg.png Main interface: annotate using the classes you defined knowtator2.jpg.png

• Pros
  • Uses a tree hierarchy of possible annotations
  • Visualization
  • Plugin to the opensource project trEd (tree Editor), which is likely to be maintained.

• Cons
  • Steep learning curve (lots of hot keys).
  • Hard to install/configure. It is available on sourceforge, but requires some undocumented tweaking (enabling unicode in config files, and including the plugin with an -I option on the command line when firing up tred)

• Screenshots

Main interface: visualize morphotree morphotrees1.jpg.png Double clicked node lets you see/edit node properties morphotrees2.jpg.png

• Proprietary tool developed for biomedical applications. Copies are not available for download on the internet.