tred-macros

Keyboard shortcuts and other macros to speed up UD annotation in TrEd.

TrEd is a customizable cross-platform treebank annotation program written in Perl and Tk. The homepage is https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/tred/ but at the time of writing this, it is pretty outdated. You may want to use TrEd directly from its GitHub repository (the backend branch), which is newer.

TrEd has many extensions for different annotation scenarios, including one for Universal Dependencies and its CoNLL-U file format. Extensions come with macros that help you achieve certain operations easier and faster. You can also define your own macros. I keep mine in this repository.

Loading the macros to TrEd

The information in this section is based on my observations and it may not be the best or intended way of achieving what I want to achieve. It is quite possible that the correct way is documented somewhere and I have overlooked it. I know of two ways how to have the macros loaded in TrEd. One is via the global configuration, the other via an extension.

TrEd's main configuration file is named .tredrc and its location depends on the operating system. On my Windows 11, it is

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming

It is possible to add the following to the configuration file:

;; ------------------------------------------------------------
;; Macros
;; ------------------------------------------------------------

MacroFile = contrib/dan/tred-ud-treex.mac

The MacroFile option is supposed to hold path relative to the tredlib subfolder in the TrEd installation folder, i.e., C:\tred\tredlib on my computer. The option thus cannot take absolute path starting with C:\Users\. We can create a new subfolder of C:\tred\tredlib\contrib` and copy the file there.

The second option is to add the macros to those of an installed TrEd extension, such as EasyTreex or UD. (Historical note: The macros were originally created for Treex in times when there was no UD extension. But now that we have the UD extension, we preferably want to use it and annotate directly CoNLL-U files.) Installed extensions can be found in the Roaming profile (just like the .tredrc file) in a folder called .tred.d. Each extension has a contrib.mac file, for example, the UD extension has it here:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.tred.d\extensions\ud\contrib\ud\contrib.mac

We can edit the file and add an include of our own macro file. Again, the path must be relative, now to the folder in which contrib.mac is found. We can either copy our file to that folder and include it just by name, or not copy it and include it by a long relative path (the first include is already part of the extension):

#include "ud.inc"
{
package UD;
#include "../../../../../../../Documents/lingvistika-projekty/tred-macros/tred-ud-treex.mac"
}

Regardless whether the macros were loaded via tredlib or via an extension, it is important which package (Perl namespace) they are in. Names of macro packages typically correspond to names of TrEd annotation modes (can be selected in the upper right corner; reset automatically when a file of a particular type is open). An extension typically defines its own annotation mode and package, often with the same name as the extension itself. Macros in tredlib belong to the TredMacro mode and package. To make sure that the macros are in the right package, either the package keyword must be used inside the macro file (e.g., package TredMacro;) or the macro file must be included from a place where the package namespace is still in effect. If the macro subroutines are not in the right package, they will be offered by the TrEd interface but an attempt to use them will fail.

All macros of all annotation modes will become available in the menu Macros / All Modes (and for the current annotation mode, also in Macros / Current Mode). Those that have keyboard shortcuts defined will be also accessible via these shortcuts provided their mode is the current mode and the shortcut has not been stolen by another macro defined later in the same mode.

I currently include the macros in package UD from the UD extension, as shown above. Some of them will need adaptation, as they were originally written for the Treex mode.

The macro language is essentially Perl. Documentation of macro writing is at: https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/pdt2.0/doc/tools/tred/ar01s14.html

Keyboard shortcuts

Dependency relation labels

• Q = acl
• V = advcl
• v = advmod
• h = advmod:emph
• q = amod
• N = appos
• a = aux
• A = aux:pass
• z = case
• C = cc
• k = ccomp
• u = compound
• j = conj
• c = cop
• S = csubj
• Y = csubj:pass
• (no shortcut for dep)
• d = det
• G = det:numgov
• D = det:nummod
• t = discourse
• p = expl:pass
• e = expl:pv
• f = fixed
• F = flat
• g = goeswith
• i = iobj
• l = list
• Z = mark
• n = nmod
• s = nsubj
• y = nsubj:pass
• m = nummod
• M = nummod:gov
• o = obj
• b = obl
• B = obl:agent
• O = orphan
• P = parataxis
• ; = punct
• r = root
• T = vocative
• x = xcomp

Parts of speech

• CTRL+A = ADJ
• CTRL+R = ADP
• CTRL+B = ADV
• CTRL+U = AUX
• CTRL+C = CCONJ
• CTRL+D = DET
• CTRL+I = INTJ
• CTRL+N = NOUN
• CTRL+M = NUM
• CTRL+T = PART
• CTRL+P = PRON
• CTRL+Z = PROPN
• CTRL+S = SCONJ
• CTRL+Y = SYM
• CTRL+V = VERB
• CTRL+X = X

Verb forms

• CTRL+j = infinitive

Genders

• CTRL+m = masculine
• CTRL+f = feminine
• CTRL+o = neuter

Numbers

• CTRL+s = singular
• CTRL+p = plural

Cases

• CTRL+n = nominative
• CTRL+g = genitive
• CTRL+d = dative
• CTRL+a = accusative
• CTRL+v = vocative
• CTRL+l = locative
• CTRL+i = instrumental