Program Arguments

Program calls follow a common format in which arguments are specified by a set of pairs of the type "[-arg [arg_value]] . The same argument names are reused as much as possible throughout the package. Some common examples are:

-i fname : input filename/directory (default=stdin)
-Si suffix  : suffix of input files if input directory was specified
-o fname : output filename/directory (default=stdout)
-So suffix  : suffix of output files if output directory was specified
-c corpus : corpus file name
-f from:to : frame range 
-p from:to : parameter range 
-Fd format : output Data Format (eg. I16 for 16-bit integer, F32 for 32-bit floating point, .. )
-t type  : output Data Type
...

The documentation will also specify what format will be used to read in the argument values, e.g.:

[-p STRING : firstparam:lastparam]

specifies that the value of argument '-p' will be read in as a STRING

Arguments that are specified by ranges, have following conventions:

• "from:to" : is a range specification, in which a range is giving that starts at "from" and ends at "to"
• "0:-1" : stands for "first till last"
• counting starts at '0' (C-convention)
• if the ":" is omitted, then the given argument specifies a single item

All programs know about following built-in arguments

--help  : gives detailed help on the comnand
--syntax : echoes the syntax of the command
--version : gives details on the version in use
--mkdirs : makes the necessary subdirectories when processing corpora
--debug_lvl  LVL : sets a debugging level
--debug_stream STREAM: specifies the stream to which the debugging information should be sent

Working with corpora

Many commands can not only operate on a single file, but can be executed at once for whole corpora. Those commands are readily identified by the availability of the '-c' option. The mechanism works as follows:

• The '-i'-flag now specifies the root directory of the input files
• The '-o'-flag now specifies the root directory of the output files
• The corpus file specifies file names relative to the root directories, without suffixes
• Input and output file names are completed by adding the appropriate suffixes
• The corpus file further contains transcriptions, range specifications within a file, ..