Get started to the source code of ELAN

ELAN
1

As a newbie of ELAN, I need to do some tailored work on it to suit our case. May I ask are there some webpages/documentations elaborating on the structure of the source code? What is best is there are some guidance/instructions for people to start to read the source code. THANKS!

2

Hello,

I’m afraid there is currently no proper documentation available for the source code. There used to be some on the previous TLA website but since that documentation was outdated it wasn’t transferred to the new website. This is one of the reasons the source code is not accessible yet in a public repository. Another reason is the fact that profound restructuring of the code is planned and partially already ongoing.

The javadoc documentation of the code varies a lot; some parts are fairly well documented, other parts not at all. Still it might be useful to run the Maven javadoc target to be able to browse that code documentation.

In general, GUI related classes are in (a subpackage of) the mpi.eudico.client package while classes concerning the internal document and data are in (a subpackage of) the mpi.eudico.server package. The documentation of the EAF file format might be useful in relation to this.

In case you wish to tell a bit more about what exactly you plan to implement (maybe via email (han.sloetjes AT mpi.nl)), we might be able to provide some more hints as to where to start.

-Han

3

Dear Han,

Thanks so much for your kind willingness to offer help.

Currently, we are using ELAN for transcription jobs, and we have a special transcription job, where the video/audio data are very important and confidential. The data are of a size of terabytes, stored in our internal server(internet connected), while the transcribers are at different locations. We cannot send the audio/video directly to them for transcription, as there exists the risk of data leakage.

For fulfilling our purpose, I come up with one idea, which is to replace the player in ELAN with another player which can meet the following criteria:

  1. Load the audio/video data from the remote server on demand like the VoD service.
  2. Prevent transcribers from copying/saving/re-distributing the data.

So, based on my idea, I need to know which part of the source code I should focus on.

Thanks so much for your kind help. For our concerns, if you have any other suggestions or ideas, please kindly let me know.

Thanks and regards,
Tristan