Software release: Alignment-Based Learning 1.0

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 Software release:      ABL 1.0
                        Alignment-Based Learning
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Alignment-Based Learning (ABL) is a symbolic grammar inference
framework that has successfully been applied for several unsupervised
machine learning tasks in Natural Language Processing (NLP).  Given
sequences of symbols only, a system that implements ABL induces
structure by aligning and comparing the input sequences.  As a result,
the input sequences are augmented with the induced structure.

More information on the underlying ABL system and its implementation
can be found in the following publications:

* "Bootstrapping Structure into Language: Alignment-Based Learning",
  Menno van Zaanen, 2001,
  PhD Thesis, School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK.
  http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~menno/personal_files/docs/t_leeds.ps.gz
  http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~menno/personal_files/docs/t_leeds.pdf

* "Implementing Alignment-Based Learning",
  Menno van Zaanen, 2002,
  In: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Grammatical
  Inference (ICGI), pp 312-314, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
  
http://springerlink.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0302-9743&volume=2484&spage=312

* "String alignment in grammatical inference: what suffix trees can do",
  Jeroen Geertzen, 2003,
  Technical report ILK-0311, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
  http://ilk.uvt.nl/downloads/pub/papers/ilk0311.pdf


The package contains a C++ implementation of ABL as well as a
reference guide (in texinfo) and the text of the licence.  The package
should be easy to install on Linux/UNIX systems (using configure).  It
is maintained by:

  Menno van Zaanen (menno@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)


The latest version of this package can be found on:

  http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~menno/research/software/abl/


For any questions, remarks, bugs, improvements, or any other matters
of concern about this package, send an email to:

  menno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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For comments and bug reports relating to ABL, please send mail to:
  menno@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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