I'm using the Brat software (http://brat.nlplab.org) to annotate my data. I have my annotated files and want to manually change them, for eg. delete some entity, edit the entity type etc.
Everytime a change is made, the page reloads which takes about 5-10 seconds. This is because brat works on a web server(http://brat.nlplab.org/installation.html), so when a change is made it uploads the changed file on server then reloads.
I need to do a number of changes and this lag is irritating. Is there a way to avoid the lag? Maybe make a local cache, make all changes in it and then upload it on the server.
This is needed to create a training data which will be done by other people, so I want it to be fast and easy for them.
The server is not really the big issue - the amount of the data that is transmitted is not very big. The larger problem if you have big document and lots of annotations is the render time. Each time you edit, there is a possibility things should move, and brat recalculates the position of all the elements; this can take quite a bit of time.
Making partial redraws possible would be a major rework. It was started once, then lagged, then got incompatible with other changes, finally abandoned. None of the original developers have time for such an effort.
Probably, the best thing you can do for your annotators is split large documents into smaller chunks (such as paragraphs), if possible.