[developers] Structured output from ACE

[Woodley Packard]

Hi Mike et al,

I've checked in an update that addresses the formatting bugs you found 
(interrupting generation result string, and interrupting "NOTE:").  I've 
also made the effect of --tsdb-notes the default when --tsdb-stdout is 
active.

I will put a little more thought into whether and how to get the type 
information out to you.

-Woodley

On 06/23/2016 05:30 PM, Michael Wayne Goodman wrote:
> Thanks, Woodley,
>
> I was able to compile ACE (with a change to Makefile to dynamically link
> libutil instead of statically; if anyone wants my notes for compiling just
> ask).
>
> The data now output by ACE will make things much easier, so thanks for
> that! I compared the output to what Stephan offers from his RESTful server,
> and note a couple of differences:
>
> 1. tcpu
> 2. rule and lexical types in the derivation (e.g. the "arrive_v1" in the
> derivation for "Abrams arrived." would have type "v_-_le")
>
> I can get (1) with --tsdb-notes, but when combined with --tsdb-stdout it is
> concatenated to the stdout line instead of appearing on its own. E.g.:
>      [...] (:aedges . 23) NOTE: tsdb parse:  (:total . 9) [...]
> Since the syntax is the same, maybe they can be concatenated without the
> "NOTE: tsdb parse: " string?
>
> As for (2), it's not part of UDF derivation trees, nor is it stored in
> [incr tsdb()] profiles as far as I know, so I don't think I can reasonably
> ask for this. It's not necessary, but it would be nice, if it is something
> ACE can easily provide. But I'm not sure where to put it (maybe in the
> :flags of a result?).
>
> Also, it seems the --tsdb-stdout is not working fully with generation. The
> surface string is being printed in the middle of the s-expression:
>
> $ echo "Abrams arrived." | ./ace -g ~/erg-1214-x86-64-0.9.23.dat | ./ace -g
> ~/erg-1214-x86-64-0.9.23.dat -e --tsdb-stdout --report-labels
> [...]
> (:results . (Abrams arrived.
> ((:result-id . 0)(:surface . "Abrams arrived.") [...]
>
> I assume you just got it working in ACE's SVN as a preview for parsing and
> not generation, so this is fine for now.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 4:48 PM Stephan Oepen <oe at ifi.uio.no> wrote:
>
>>> The output is formatted as (a list of) s-expressions, and is identical to
>>> the data sent to [incr tsdb()] [...]
>> thanks, woodley.  that was in fact a thought i too had entertained
>> during the API discussion: my RESTful server actually works off [incr
>> tsdb()] item structures, so ACE communicating with different callers
>> in the outside world using that same format seems utterly plausible to
>> me :-).
>>
>> cheers, oe
>>