Preface

Welcome to the book you will want to have by your side when you cross the door of a new consulting gig or take on a new Natural Language Processing (NLP) problem. This book starts as a private repository of LingPipe recipes that Baldwin continually referred to when facing repeated but twitchy NLP problems with system building. We are an open source company but the code never merited sharing. Now they are shared.

Honestly, the LingPipe API is an intimidating and opaque edifice to code against like any rich and complex Java API. Add in the "black arts" quality needed to get NLP systems working and we have the perfect conditions to satisfy the need for a recipe book that minimizes theory and maximizes the practicality of getting the job done with best practices sprinkled in from 20 years in the business.

This book is about getting the job done; damn the theory! Take this book and build the next generation of NLP systems and send us a note about what you did.

LingPipe is the best tool on the planet to build NLP systems with; this book is the way to use it.