Text Common Annotation System (TCAS) Interfaces

Text Common Annotation System (TCAS) Interfaces.

The TCAS defines some convenience APIs for using the basic CAS system for text analysis. It defines the notion of a document, and of annotations spanning parts of documents. It also provides a standard way of ordering annotations, and an annotation index with respect to that ordering.

With the Sofa related extensions, a TCAS is now a "view" of a CAS tied to a Sofa in the CAS. Most of the CAS structures in a `TCAS` are references to those in the "base CAS" from which it was instantiated. Each TCAS contains the Sofa it is tied to and a Index Repository that is distinct from the Index Repository in the "base CAS".

The standard sequence for annotations is as follows. If annotation a1 starts before annotation a2, then a1 is smaller than a2. If a1 and a2 start at the same place and a2 ends before a1, then also a1 is smaller than a2. If a1 and a2 start and end at the same place, then they are currently considered to be equal, and their sequence in the index is undefined.