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<Paper uid="W00-1434">
  <Title>RSTTool 2.4 - A Markup Tool for Rhetorical Structure Theory</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="253" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 What is RSTTool For?
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The RSTTool is an analysis tool, but most users of the tool are researchers in the text generation field.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> For this reason, we present the tool at this conference. null Several reasons for using the tool are: . Corpus Studies: before one can generate text, one nmst understand the rhetorical patterns of language. By performing analyses of texts sin&gt; ilar to which one wishes to generate, one can identify the recurrent structures in tile text-type and work towards understanding their context of use.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> o Results Verification: often, a particular study may be challenged by other researchers. If the study was performed using RSTTool, the corpus supporting the study can be released for analysis by others. Previously, most RST analysis was done bv hand, malting distribution of</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> ..... he author hereby gra, t permission to use, copy, modify, ~distribute, and license this software and PSt6 documentation for ~any purpose, ~ provided that existing copyright notices are ~'~retained in all copies; and that this notice is iscluded verbatim ~|in any distributions.~ No written agree~aent, license, or royalty fee is required for any of the authorized use~s.i ~.~,~,~,~,~IModtflcations .to this software may be copyrighted by their ~|authors&lt; mnd need not follow the licensing terms described here,: (~h~9~provided that~ the new terms are clearly indicated on the first ~N.:'t&amp;~NI~ge of e~h file ~here ~h~y ~pp~y.:! Figure h The Segmentation Interface corpora difficult. RSTTool thus not only simplifies the production of the corpus, but also allows ease of distribution and verification.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> . Diagram Preparation: the RSTTool can also be used for diagram preparation, for inclusion in papers. The tool allows diagrams to be exported as EPS files, ready for inclusion in LaTeX documents (as demonstrated in this paper). For PCs and Mac, screen-dumps of diagrams are possible (Tcl/Tk does not yet fully support export of GIF or JPG formats, and conversion from EPS to other formats is primitive). Some versions of MS Word allow the inclusion of EPS diagrams.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> o A Teaching Tool: by getting students to analyse texts with the RSTTool, teachers of discourse theory can increase the student's understanding of the theory.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> To allow RSTTool analyses to be more generally usable, the tool now saves its analyses in an XML format, making loading into other systems for processing much simpler.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="253" end_page="253" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Segmentation Interface
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The first step in RST analysis is to deternline segment boundaries. RSTTool provides an interface to facilitate this task. The user starts by &amp;quot;importing&amp;quot; a plain text file. The user can then automatically segment at sentence boundaries by pressing the &amp;quot;Sentences&amp;quot; button. This segmentation is not 100% reliable, but is reasonably intelligent. The user carl then correct any mistakes made by the automatic segnrentation, and also add in segment boundaries within sentences.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> To add a segment boundary, the user simply clicks at the t)oint of the text where the boundary is desired. A boundary marker is inserted. To temove a boundary, the user simply clicks on the boundary marker. Figure 1 shows the Segmentation interface after clausal segmentation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The user can also edit the text, correcting mistakes, etc.,.by switching to Edit mode.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The user then moves to the Structuring interface by clicking on the &amp;quot;Structurer&amp;quot; button at the top of the window. Note that the user can return at any point to the Segmentation interface, to change segment boundaries, or edit text. These changes are automatically accounted for in the structuring component. null</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="253" end_page="254" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Structuring Interface
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The next step involves structuring the text. The second interface of the RSTTool allows the user to connect the segments into a rhetorical structure tree.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> as shown in figure 2. We have followed the graphical style presented in Mann and Thompson (1988).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The tool supports not only RST structuring, but also constituency structuring. I believe that texts cannot always be analysed totally in ternrs of rhetorical relations, and that some level of schematic analysis complements the rhetorical analysis. For instance, a typical conference paper (such as this one) can be assigned a top level schematic structure  The R.STTool allows intermixing of such schema with RST analysis.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Initially, all segments are unconnected, ordered at the top of the window. The user can then drag tile mouse from one segment (tile satelite) to another (the nucleus) to link them.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The system allows both plain RST relations and also multi-nuclear relations (e.g., Joint, Sequence,  When he took it It was as heavy and he was because he up, as lead, going to throw it thought a trick away, had been played  etc.). Scoping is also possible, whereby tile user indicates that the nucleus of a relation is not a segment itself, but rather a segment and all of its satellites. See figure 3 for an example combining normal RST relations (Circumstance, Motivation); nmltinuclear structure (Conjunction), and scoping (the nodes marked 1-2 and 3-4). In addition, schemas can be used to represent constituency-type structures. See figure 4.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> Because RST-structures can become very elaborate, the RSTTool allows the user to collapse sub-trees - hiding the substructure under a node. This makes it easier, for instance, to comtect two nodes which normally would not appear on the same page of the editor.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="254" end_page="254" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5 Editing Relations
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The tool provides an interface for editing relation sets. The user can add, delete or rename relations.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> If the relation is in use in the current analysis, the changes are propagated throughout the analysis.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="8" start_page="254" end_page="254" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Statistical Analysis
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Discussions on the RST mail list have demonstrated that there is a community concern with frequency of different relations in specific text-types. The RSTTool, by providing counts of relations within a text, supports this research goal. See figure 5.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The interface shows not only the frequency of relations, but also the ratio of Nuc Sat orderings to Sat lquc orderings for the relation (valuable data for both generation and automatic discourse structure recognition).</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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