[developers] RESTful ERG parsing

[Stephan Oepen]

dear colleagues,

i used part of the easter break to teach myself about modern
technologies and are currently in the process of providing a RESTful
(programmatic) interface to the on-line ERG demonstrator.  i know of
at least one colleague who has been waiting impatiently for this
functionality :-).

in a nutshell, client software can now obtain parses using the HTTP
protocol and URIs providing the input string (and a handful of
optional parameters).  for example:

  http://erg.delph-in.net/rest/0.9/parse?input=Abrams%20arrived.

parsing results will be returned in machine-readable format,
serialized as a JSON document.  for a little more background on how to
use this new service (including an example client in Python, believe
it or not), please see:

  http://moin.delph-in.net/ErgApi

there is some more work to be done on the interface (see the page
above), but i would like to ask for help already at this point:

(0) in case you notice anything surprising in the interactive ERG
demonstrator, please do not hesitate to let me know!

(1) i still need to provide a serialization of MRSs in JSON; in case
anyone has previously tackled this (design) problem, please do get in
touch!

(2) i think it might be nice to incorporate RESTful parsing as an
option in pyDelphin; mike, could you be interested in collaborating on
this?

finally, i would be curious to hear comments or suggestions for how to
use and extend this service (though cannot promise i will have a lot
of time to develop this further until another holiday break); please
see towards the bottom of the above wiki page for some candidate
directions.

best wishes; god påske!  oe