This application requires Java 1.4.1 (or higher) and Ant 1.5.1 (or higher) in order to run properly.

Java is not provided, it is available for download from Sun website.
Ant is not provided, it is available for download from Ant website.

Other required packeges (provided in the zip file):
- Jena-1.5.0;
- JTidy;
- Kunststoff Look&Feel;
- SkinLF;
- tools.jar (belongs to j2sdk's lib directory).

Note: this application has been tested only under Windows2000.

Step1: download and install j2sdk following the instructions provided by Sun. Remember to set the environment variable JAVA_HOME;
Step2: download and install Ant following the instructions provided by the Apache Ant Project. Unless you (or your system administrator) are a security freak and you need a signature (PGP or MD5) for everything you download, you can simply grab the ZIP file. According to the Ant manual it is recommended to install Ant in a short path (eg.: C:\Ant). Remember to set the environment variable ANT_HOME;
Step3: download and unzip MnM2.zip in C:\Program Files\.

Note:When entering the path for JAVA_HOME or ANT_HOME just remember to specify only the base directory used for the installation and not the path for the binary files (bin).

Tip1: to set environment variables under Windows2000 select Start>Settings>Control Panel. From the Control Panel double-click on the System icon. Select Environment Variables... from the Advanced tab. A new dialog will appear. Choose New... from the System Variables group and insert the required information.

Tip2: to set environment variables under Linux edit the file .bashrc in your home directory adding the following line:
      export VARIABLE_NAME=<variable_path>;

To execute the application under Windows2000 there are different options available:
Option1: open the Command Prompt, go to the directory where MnM has been installed and type "MnM2";
Option2: open Windows Explorer, go to the directory where MnM has been installed and double-click on the "MnM2.bat" icon;
Option3: follow Option2 and instead of a double-click on "MnM2.bat" perform a right-click on it and create a shortcut, so that you can place it on the desktop.

To execute the application under Linux simply open the console, go to the directory where MnM has been installed and type "ant -buildfile Java\mnm2.xml"

In order to increase the speed of the application allow the Java Virtual Machine to use more memory - at least half of the RAM - certain plugins are very resource hungry!. You can accomplish this by editing the file MnM2/Java/mnm2.xml and changing the value of the option maxmemory in the execute target (to eg: 32m, 64m, ...).
You can fine tune the way MnM behaves by modifying the configuration file MnM2/Java/mnm2.xml according to the comments included in the file itself and the documentation you can find in the Ant website.

During your first run with MnM it is essential that you spend some time to set-up the environment you are going to work with. To do this just open the Preference Dialog from the Settings>Preferences... menu.

The following is a step-by-step introduction to the basic functionalities of MnM.

Step0: decide what to do (populate kb, mark-up documents or both);
Step1: load an ontology (from a server or a file);
Step2: create/load a Knowledge Base;
Step3: choose the ontology and the class you want to use;
Step4: if you want to Manually populate the KB:
      4.a: right-click on the class for which you want to create a new instance and select Add new instance...;
      4.b: fill in the required fields;
      4.c: commit the new instance to the KB (OK button);
Step5: select a set of documents to annotate;
Step6: create a directory to store the mark-up documents. We call this training corpus directory;
Step7: mark-up the documents (open the class that you want to use if you haven't already done so);
      7.a: load a document;
      7.b: highlight a piece of text in the document;
      7.c: double-click on the slot/relation you want to use for the mark-up;
      7.d: repeat 7.b and 7.c until you are happy with the annotation;
      7.e: save the annotated document (in XML format) in the training corpus directory;
      7.f: repeat from 7.a to 7.e until you have marked-up all you documents;
Step8: if you want to Semi-Automatically populate the KB (this can be done at any moment during Step6):
      8.a: select one or more instances from the KB that you want to modify using the bits of annotated text;
      8.b.i: right-click on the selected instance(s) and choose Import Mark-up...;
      or
      8.b.ii: right-click on the tagged value, in the document, and choose Add to instance(s);
Step9: if you want to Automatically populate the KB:
      9.a: select an Information Extraction plugin;
      9.b.i: start the learning phase on the training corpus (you need 6~8 annotated documents for a small example or at least 30 documents for a real situation);
      or
      9.b.ii: if the class has already a library created by the IE plugin in a previous run just select it;
      9.c: select a set of non-annotated documents;
      9.d: create a directory to store the non-annotated documents. We call this test corpus directory;
      9.e: start the extraction phase on the test corpus;
      9.f: use the results of the extraction phase to populate the KB (Accept or Accept All buttons).