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GATE - general achitecture for text engineering - is open source software capable of solving almost any text processing problem. This artifact enables you to embed the core GATE Embedded with its essential dependencies. You will able to use the GATE Embedded API and load and store GATE XML documents. This artifact is the perfect dependency for CREOLE plugins or for applications that need to customize the GATE dependencies due to confict with their own dependencies or for lower footprint.

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/*
 *  CreoleParameter.java
 *
 *  Copyright (c) 2008, The University of Sheffield.
 *
 *  This file is part of GATE (see http://gate.ac.uk/), and is free
 *  software, licenced under the GNU Library General Public License,
 *  Version 2, June 1991 (in the distribution as file licence.html,
 *  and also available at http://gate.ac.uk/gate/licence.html).
 *
 *  Ian Roberts, 27/Jul/2008
 *
 *  $Id: CreoleParameter.java 16723 2013-07-05 10:37:59Z domrout $
 */

package gate.creole.metadata;

import java.lang.annotation.Documented;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;
import java.util.Collection;

/**
 * Annotation used to define a parameter to a CREOLE resource. This annotation
 * should be used in one of two ways:
 * 
 * 
 * To annotate the set method corresponding to the parameter.
 * The parameter's name is inferred from the method name, and its type is
 * inferred from the type of the method's argument.
 * To annotate the field for the parameter itself. The corresponding get and
 * set methods must exist for the field
 * 
 * 
 * When annotating a method whose argument type is a subtype of
 * {@link Collection}, GATE also attempts to infer the collection element type
 * from any generic type arguments given. If the collection type is a raw type
 * then you will need to supply the collectionElementType explicitly in the
 * annotation.
 * 
 * 
 * Parameters can be marked as optional or runtime parameters using the
 * appropriate additional annotations.
 * 
 * 
 * @see Optional
 * @see RunTime
 */
@Documented
@Target( {ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface CreoleParameter {
  /**
   * Dummy type used to signify that no value has been supplied for {@link #collectionElementType()}.
   */
  public static interface NoElementType {}
  
  /**
   * Special value used to signify the absence of a default value for a
   * parameter.
   */
  public static final String NO_DEFAULT_VALUE = "____NO_DEFAULT____";
  
  /**
   * The default priority value assumed if no explicit priority
   * is set.
   */
  public static final int DEFAULT_PRIORITY = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
  
  /**
   * The item class name for parameters whose type is a Collection, Set
   * or List. When annotating a field or get method with a parameterised type
   * (e.g. List<String>), the correct value can often be
   * inferred automatically, but if a value is specified here it takes
   * precedence.
   */
  Class collectionElementType() default NoElementType.class;

  /**
   * The default value for the parameter, expressed as a string. For
   * non-string parameters, follow the rules given in the user
   * guide. If not specified, the default is null.
   */
  String defaultValue() default NO_DEFAULT_VALUE;

  /**
   * A descriptive comment about this parameter.
   */
  String comment() default "";

  /**
   * Semicolon-separated list of file suffixes accepted by default for
   * this parameter. For parameters of type {@link java.net.URL}, the
   * GUI provides a button to locate the desired file in a Java file
   * chooser. The suffixes list defines the default file name filter
   * used by the file chooser.
   */
  String suffixes() default "";

  /**
   * If this parameter is part of a disjunction, set an ID here. All
   * parameters sharing the same disjunction ID will be grouped together
   * in a single disjunction. If not specified, the parameter will not
   * be considered as part of a disjunction.
   */
  String disjunction() default "";
  
  /**
   * If this parameter is part of a disjunction, the order in which
   * the disjunctive parameters are listed is determined by their
   * priority values.  Parameters with smaller priority values are
   * considered "more important" than those with larger values (i.e.
   * 1 is higher priority than 10).  When creating a new resource
   * instance in GATE Developer, the parameters dialog offers the
   * parameters in each disjunction in priority order, so you should
   * assign priorities to your parameters such that the most important
   * parameter in each disjunction is the most frequent use case.  For
   * example, in a JAPE transducer the grammarURL parameter (for
   * loading a .jape file) is considered more important than the
   * binaryGrammarURL (for loading a serialized transducer).
   */
  int priority() default Integer.MAX_VALUE;
}