All annotations are entered either into the
box or into the box, which are accessed via the Timeline, Interlinear, Grid, Text and Subtitle Viewers. ELAN supports the following options:entering annotations (section the section called “Entering annotations (into the Inline Edit box)” and the section called “Entering annotations (into the Edit Annotation box)”);
entering annotations before/after other annotations (the section called “Entering annotations before/after other annotations”);
modifying the content of annotations (the section called “Modifying the content of annotations”);
deleting annotations (the section called “Deleting annotations”);
entering annotations in different character sets (the section called “Entering annotations in different character sets”).
Select the time span in which you want to place the annotation.
Access the
box by doing one of the following:Either double-click in the Timeline Viewer on the selection at about the height of the tier where you want to enter the annotation.
Or click on
menu, then click on (active tier only).Or use the key equivalent ALT+N (active tier only).
In all cases, the
box appears, e.g.:Do one of the following:
Press the keys CTRL+ENTER (without entering an annotation) to create an empty annotation.
Enter an annotation and then press the keys CTRL+ENTER to save the selection.
It is possible to enter text that contains line breaks. The text entry box automatically displays a scrollbar if necessary.
The
box is automatically preconfigured for the default character set of the tier. If you want to use a different character set, do the following:Right-click in the
box. A pull-down menu appears that displays the available character sets.Click on the appropriate character set. From now on, the characters are entered in the selected set.
If you are using a third-party keyboarding solution like Keyman, make sure to select the default system language as input language for the tier to be edited (e.g. Dutch if your system language is set to Dutch).
To switch back to the default character set, repeat the steps above and select the default set from the pull-down menu.
Only selections on time-alignable tiers can be saved in this way. To save a selection on a referring tier, see the section called “Making and saving a selection on a referring tier”.
Save the annotation by doing one of the following:
Use the shortcut keys CTRL+ENTER.
Or right-click in the
box and click on in the pull-down menu.To exit the
box without saving, do one of the following:Use the shortcut key ESC.
Or right-click in the
box and click on in the pull-down menu.An alternative method to get an
box is:Click a time that should become the begintime of the annotation.
Press SHIFT+ENTER.
Click a time that should become the endtime of the annotation.
Again press SHIFT+ENTER.
An
box appears on the selected tier. You can now enter an annotation and save it in the way explained above.The
box differs from the box in that it has a bigger, resizable, display and supports line wrapping. It is therefore better for entering longer texts.To enter an annotation into the
box, do the following:Either make a selection in the Timeline Viewer (see the section called “Making a selection on an independent tier”), or click on an existing annotation in the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer.
Access the the section called “Entering annotations (into the Inline Edit box)”).
box (seeDo one of the following:
Either use the shortcut keys SHIFT+ENTER.
Or right-click in the
box. A pull-down menu appears. Click on .The
box appears:
The box
is automatically preconfigured for the default character set
of the tier (see the section called “Changing tier attributes”). If you want to use
a different character set, do the following:
Click on
. A pull-down menu appears that displays the available character sets, e.g.:Click on the appropriate character set. From now on, the characters are entered in the selected set. (For an overview of the input methods for the character sets see the section called “Entering annotations in different character sets”).
To switch back to the default character set, repeat the steps above and select the default set from the pull-down menu.
Edit the annotation.
Save the annotation by doing one of the following:
Use the shortcut keys CTRL+ENTER.
In the
box, click on and then click on in the pull-down menu.To exit the
box without saving, do one of the following:Use the shortcut key ESC.
In the
box, click on and then click on in the pull-down menu.To return to the
box, do one of the following:Use the shortcut keys SHIFT+ENTER.
In the
box, click on in the pull-down menu.Annotations on some tiers can be subdivided into smaller units. In this way, you can for example break up a sentence into different words (or words into morphemes, etc.), as in the following illustration:
To divide an annotation into smaller units, do the
following:
In the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer, click on the annotation that you want to subdivide. It appears in a dark blue frame.
Do one of the following:
Right-click on the selected annotation. A pull-down menu appears. Click on either
or on to subdivide the annotation.Or click on
menu. Then click on either or on to subdivide the annotation.If you click on
, the original annotation is divided and the new annotation is inserted to its left (as in the illustration below). If you click on , it is inserted to its right.This option is only available for those tiers that are assigned to the stereotypes Time Subdivision and Symbolic Subdivision (see the section called “Basic Information: Annotations, tiers and linguistic types”).
An annotation is always subdivided into two units. If you need further subdivisions, repeat the steps above.
Gaps between annotations on a tier can be transformed into annotations on the same tier or on a new tier. To do so, click
. In the dialog window, select the (independent) tier for which you wish to transform the gaps into annotations. Then select whether you wish to put the new annotation on the same tier or on a new tier and specify a tier name in the latter case. Also specify the contents of the new annotations: either a specific value, the duration of a gap or no contents.It is possible to select multiple tiers when creating annotations from gaps. Selecting multiple tiers can be done by holding the CTRL key while clicking other tiers than the one already selected. The SHIFT key can be used in a similar way to select the range of tiers from the one that is selected to the one that is clicked. The gaps created from multiple tiers are periods where each of the selected tiers has no annotation.
When there is a time interval you wish to divide in a number of adjacent annotations with the same duration you can do that by clicking on Figure 5.53, “Regular Annotations”) select the tiers that must receive the new annotations. Then do one of the following:
. In the dialog window (seeEnter Start time and Duration (End time is calculated automatically).
Enter Start time and End time (Duration is calculated automatically).
Finally, enter a Annotation size and click
.
The total duration of the new annotations does not exceed
the interval between start and end time. So if start time is 1.000
seconds and, end time is 4.000 seconds (interval of 3 seconds) and
the annotation size is 2.000 seconds, than only one new annotations
is created because two would make a duration of 4 seconds which
exceeds the interval defined by the start and end time.
If there is an overlap between the new annotations and one or more existing annotations, these existing annotations will be removed.
If two annotation are adjacent and have the same length (for instance after creating regular annotations, see the section called “Creating regular annotations”) and if the second annotation is empty, you can copy the value of the first annotation to the second. This is done by selecting the first annotation and pressing CTRL+SHIFT+D. Now the second annotation is selected and you can repeat the process to get a string of adjacent annotations with the same value.
An additional result of CTRL+SHIFT+D is that if there are annotations on another tier that have the same begin and end time as the annotations you are working on, and the second of those annotations is empty, then the value of the first annotation on that tier is also copied to the second annotation on that tier.
Sometimes you don't want annotations to contain transcriptions of the media you are working on, but you rather want to label and number them for later processing. In ELAN this is accomplished by clicking Figure 5.54, “Label and Numbering annotations” you can select one or more tiers to provide labels and numbering.
. In the dialog as shown in
The formating options of the label and numbering
include:
Include label part: the text to act as label (or prefix) for each annotation.
Insert delimiter: a delimiter between the label in front and the number.
Include number part:
Integer: the number of each annotation is an integer and the increment value is also an integer.
Decimal: the number of each annotation is a decimal and the increment value can also be a decimal.
Prepend leading zeros: leading zeros for easy sorting in post-processing (e.g. 001, 002, 003 etc).
Start value: the value the numbering must start with.
Increment: the value with which the number in the next annotation is incremented.
The result of the options is shown below the options in a blue box. This result is updated as you change the options.
Creating annotation units can be a time consuming job. Therefore, ELAN offers a faster way to initially mark the boundaries of annotation units on a root tier (i.e. where the linguistic type stereotype is “None”): on-the-fly segmentation. This way of working is similar to Transcriber[10]’s segmentation mode. This mode can be accessed through and works as follows:
Select the tier to be segmented
Choose between two keystrokes/annotation (non-adjacent annotations), one keystroke/annotation (this makes all annotations adjacent) and one keystroke/annotation, fixed duration (specify the duration and whether the keystroke marks the begin or end of an annotation).
Use the media controls to play the media file or use the keyboard shortcuts (see the section called “Playing a document & making selections”).
Do either of following:
Press ENTER to start/end an annotation unit, while the movie or sound file is playing
If the linguistic type of the selected tier has a controlled vocabulary and the entries of this CV have shortcut keys, press the shortcut key of the desired CV entry instead of ENTER to start/end an annotation unit. See also the section called “The creation of a CV”.
Once finished, choose
to save the newly created annotations or to discard the changes.The segmentation is considered as a single operation and thus can be reversed by a single undo command.
To modify an annotation, do one of the following:
In the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer:
Click on the annotation that you want to modify. It appears in a dark blue frame.
Do one of the following:
Right-click on the selected annotation. A pull-down menu appears. Click on
.Or click on
.Or use the key equivalent ALT+M.
The the section called “Entering annotations (into the Inline Edit box)”).
box appears (seeIn the Grid Viewer:
Double-click on the annotation that you want to modify.
The the section called “Entering annotations (into the Inline Edit box)”).
box appears (seeTo change the letter case of all annotation on a tier, click
. Then select the tier you wish to change, choose the letter case the annotation should get and click . If you select Lowercase, you are able to specify that each annotation should begin with a capital.To delete the value of annotation, do the following:
In the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer, click on the annotation from which you want to delete the value. It appears in a dark blue frame.
To delete it, do one of the following:
Right-click on the selected annotation. A pull-down menu appears. Click on
.Or click on
menu. Then click on .Or use the key equivalent ALT+Delete.
The annotation value is deleted without further warning.
To delete one annotation, do the following:
In the Timeline or Interlinear Viewer, click on the annotation that you want to delete. It appears in a dark blue frame.
To delete it, do one of the following:
Right-click on the selected annotation. A pull-down menu appears. Click on
.Or click on
in the main menu. Then click on .Or use the key equivalent ALT+D.
ELAN also gives the possibility to delete multiple annotations: click on
in the main menu. Now click one of the five menu items:To delete a number of specific annotations on more than one tier, select those annotations by holding ALT while clicking them. The annotations get a purple border. Then right click in the Timeline Viewer and select .
Annotations are deleted without further warning.
If you delete an annotation on a parent tier, the corresponding annotations on all its child tiers will be automatically deleted as well. Please make sure that you do not accidentally delete a child annotation. An annotation on a child tier can be deleted without consequences for the annotation on its parent tier.
It is possible to merge two annotations on an independent tier into one annotation. To do so, select the first annotation of the two you want to merge. Then either right click in the Timeline Viewer or click Figure 5.56, “Merge annotations” illustrates this.
in the Elan main menu and select . The resulting annotation starts where the first had started and it ends where the second had ended. Note that the annotations on dependent tiers are also involved in the merging process. The result is that the last annotation on a dependent tier that is part of the first annotation on the independent tier is stretched so that it ends where the second annotation on the independent tier begins.ELAN supports different character sets, making use of the following input methods:
GATE Unicode Kit (GUK)
Characters can be entered by using a different keyboard mapping. This method is implemented using the GATE Unicode Kit developed at Sheffield University, Department of Computer Science.
If you select a character set that is based on GUK, a visual representation of a keyboard appears on the screen, which informs you about the implemented keyboard mapping. The following illustrations show the mappings of “ipa-96 (SAMPA)” and “Arabic (WINDOWS)”:
To enter a character, do one the
following:
Either press the corresponding key on your keyboard.
Or click on the corresponding key of the keyboard displayed on your screen.
The visual representation has the layout of the standard UK keyboard. If you do not have a UK keyboard, there may be mismatches between the characters and their visual representation.
For example, the IPA character “ə;” is matched to the key “@”, i.e., in order to get “ə”, you have to type “@”. On a standard UK keyboard, the key “@” is located to the left of the key “enter” (see the illustration above). On other keyboards, however, “@” may be located on a different key. In such cases, if you press the key to the left of “enter”, you will not get the character “ə”. To get “ə”, you have to search for the location of “@” on your keyboard, and then press that key. (Note that these mismatches only arise if you use the physical keyboard, but not if you use the visual representation on the screen.)
The character set “ipa-96 (SAMPA)” can be used to enter IPA characters. However, the current version of ELAN only supports SAMPA, but not X-SAMPA. As a consequence, some of the characters that you require may not be available yet (see http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa for further information).
Roman Typographic Root (RTR)
IPA characters can be entered using the RTR input method. This method is based on the following principle: whenever you type a character, all typographically similar characters are displayed in a lookup list, as shown in the following illustration:
To select a character from the lookup list, do the
following:
Use the UP and DOWN arrow keys to navigate to the desired character.
Press ENTER or SPACE to confirm the selection.
Do not use the mouse within the lookup window. If you do, the window will disappear.
The input of IPA characters is restricted to the official IPA-96 character set. Withdrawn or superseded characters are not supported.
The RTR-mapping is generally obvious, but please pay attention to the following features:
Use lower case letters only.
IPA characters can map to non-letter symbols, e.g.:
Diacritics are entered with the help of the following keys:
Table 5.4. Diacritics
key | position of diacritic in relation to character |
---|---|
“ | (quotation mark) above |
‘ | (apostrophe) in the upper right |
: | (colon) to the right |
` | (grave accent) in the lower right |
^ | (circumflex accent) under |
‘ | (tilde) on |
For example:
On Windows 2000, if you use an international keyboard, you have to type SPACE after typing the quotation mark (“) or one of the accents (‘, `, ^).
It is possible to stack diacritics, but there may be problems displaying them.
Chinese characters
Chinese characters, both traditional and simplified, are entered using the Pinyin method. Characters are selected by starting to type Roman characters. Candidates are shown in a lookup window while the user types along. The desired character is selected with the UP and DOWN arrow keys, e.g.:
Use the following procedure:
Enter the pinyin word with the keyboard. For each pinyin word, a list of Han symbols is shown in a popup window.
Navigate to a Han symbol with the UP and DOWN arrow keys.
Page through the list with the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys.
Select a Han symbol with the SPACE or the ENTER key.
Do not use the mouse within the lookup window. If you do, the window will disappear.
On Windows 98, you cannot display both Chinese and IPA characters.
Keyboard tools
If the options above don’t fulfill your needs (e.g. the character set is not supported or you don’t want to use the on-screen display for a large amount of annotations) you might want to look for a third-party solution. Such a tool provides a mean to remap your keyboard to the desired input character set. For details, we refer to the following programs:
Keyman (Windows), http://www.tavultesoft.com/
Ukelele (Mac), http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele
If you are using a third-party keyboarding solution like Keyman, make sure to select the default system language as input language for the tier to be edited (e.g. Dutch if your system language is set to Dutch).
In ELAN it is possible to associate an individual annotation with a data category of the ISO Data Category Repository (DCR). To do so first select an annotation. Then click ALT+SHIFT+M). In the next window (Figure 5.65, “Local Data Category Selection: Annotation”), first select a profile in the left panel and then select a data category in the middle panel. Finally click on to associate the selected data category to the annotation.
in the main menu of ELAN and select (alternatively pressMore information about the ISO DCR and how to use it can be found in the section called “Data categories”.