(Better, Faster,) Lighter NLTK

NLTK-Lite is substantially simplified and streamlined version of NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit). NLTK is no longer supported.

NLTK-Lite is a new collection of lightweight NLP modules designed for maximum simplicity and efficiency. NLTK-Lite only covers the simple variants of standard data structures and tasks. Simplicity and efficiency are valued over generality and extensibility.

Key differences from NLTK:

• requires Python 2.4
• tokens are represented as strings, tuples, or trees
• all tokenizers are iterators; large tasks produce output as early as possible
• more emphasis on Python constructs instead of NLTK constructs
• default pipeline processing paradigm leads to more transparent code
• taggers incorporate backoff for smaller models and faster operation
• shorter names (e.g. tokenizer.RegexpTokenizer() becomes tokenize.regexp())
• tutorials are more easily maintained now with docutils and doctest
• contributed software is more easily incorporated

unrelated: Better, Faster, Lighter Java