CoNLL-U output

[rgalhama]

Feature description

It would be useful to have the parsed output of Spacy into CoNLL-U format (as asked already in automatically closed issue #533).
I have created a script for that (see https://gist.github.com/rgalhama/8beb48d21bcbc86982f97ac9c3a28f97 ) but it would be nice to have it integrated in Spacy as an option.

Could the feature be a custom component or spaCy plugin?

If so, we will tag it as project idea so other users can take it on.

[BramVanroy]

Ah, great snippet! I would really like to see this built-in as well (using CoNLL-U and not older versions of the standard). CoNLL-U is a lightweight format and easy enough to parse.

The comment on your gist is very relevant, though. Multi-word or multi-token units should get the attention they deserve. To be fair, I am not sure how spaCy handles such units by itself.

From a programming perspective, I see some possible improvements for a Python 3 environment. I'd argue in favor of using pathlib over os.path because its interface is much more straightforward and Pythonic - for instance pathlib.Path.is_file(). (Interesting read here.) But pathlib has only been introduced in 3.4. Second, in Python 3 a normal built-in open() can be used instead of codecs.open(). Lastly, f-strings are boss.

For now, however, I am eager to hear what the maintainers think. Perhaps it is better to turn that gist into a repo?

[rgalhama]

Thanks a lot for your positive reaction and your improvement suggestions, which I'll incorporate as soon as I find a bit of time.
I thought maybe this was too short to make it a repo but I'm completely open to the idea.

[BramVanroy]

I think having a dedicated repo allows us for easier collaboration. I don't think gists are really suited for that. But you can do whatever seems easiest for you to maintain the code of course.

[rgalhama]

Good point; I've just created it.
You can find it here: https://github.com/rgalhama/spaCy2CoNLLU

[ines]

@rgalhama This is really nice, thanks for sharing!

I've added the repo to the spaCy Universe so others can find it more easily. See here:
https://spacy.io/universe/?id=spacy2conllu

[rgalhama]

That's great, thanks!!