【问题和解决】python中nltk与nltk_contrib的关系

最近在读导师给的《Natural Language Processing with Python》.

在读到11章11.5这一小节时，遇到这样一段代码。

from nltk_contrib import toolbox

其实，在我安装的Python和nltk包里面，并没有nltk_contirb。我是又单独在官网上下载的nltk_contrib。尽管现在可以使用了，但是我还是在疑问nltk和nltk_contrib之间的关系。

由于国内的网站上相关的资料太少，貌似又没有人提出这个疑问（难道是我太钻牛角了？）。于是，我在谷歌论坛上，发表了一个帖子。

问题如下：

My questions are as follows:

1 What is the relationship between "nltk" and "nltk_contrib"?（nltk和nltk_contrib之间的关系是什么？）

2 Is "Nltk_contrib" already out of date?（nltk_contrib已经过时了吗？）

有一位印第安纳大学伯明顿分校的在校学生Alex为我做了解答：

他的英文原文是：

> 1 What is the relationship between "nltk" and "nltk_contrib"? 

nltk_contrib is a separate repository where people can contribute 
miscellaneous NLP tools -- there's a lot of stuff in there, and it may 
or may not be useful. Or it may or may not work. 

> 2 Is "Nltk_contrib" already out of date? 

A bunch of things in it are out of date :-( We should update them! 

Did you have a specific problem using the toolbox? 

-- 
-- alexr 
 
 

他回答的很详细。英语也很容易懂。所以就不翻译了。

后续补充：

我的回复：
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 6:01 PM, XXX <limaoma...@gmail.com> wrote: 
> 
> Hi Alex: 
>      First of all, thank you for your answer. This post has been published 
> for a long time, I thought that no one wants to answer my question, I am 
> glad to see your reply. 
>      The reason why these questions, because I found the toolbox there are a 
> lot of versions. In addition to this version of the nltk_contrib.toolbox, 
> there nltk.toolbox, and nltk.corpus.reader.toolbox. 
>       The reason why I use nltk_contrib is there is a more useful function 
> for me, that is nltk_contrib.data.indent (XXXX). 
>       Thanks again for your help! 

Alex的回复：
Oh, that's interesting! Thanks for pointing this out, how there's a 
"toolbox" module in both nltk and nltk_contrib! 

The modules in nltk vs nltk_contrib look pretty different, but they're 
by the same author... we should probably write down some documentation 
for what they do, and maybe when to use which one! 

---Alex