Currently we allow the name of any annotation set, annotation name, document feature, or annotation feature to be any random object including null (see gate-core#19). This can cause issues when trying to access these values in JAPE (quoting in JAPE can get messy) and also allows no consistent way of referring to a value through a path like object. One possible option that has been discussed (at least between myself @johann-petrak ) is to restrict these names and to only allow String objects containing valid Java identifiers.
It's likely that this would break some existing code, but would allow us to implement some new ideas in a more straightforward fashion, as such this would be a change made in a future major version of GATE, and so this issue is as much for open discussion of the idea as it is to track progress on making the change.
Currently we allow the name of any annotation set, annotation name, document feature, or annotation feature to be any random object including null (see gate-core#19). This can cause issues when trying to access these values in JAPE (quoting in JAPE can get messy) and also allows no consistent way of referring to a value through a path like object. One possible option that has been discussed (at least between myself @johann-petrak ) is to restrict these names and to only allow String objects containing valid Java identifiers. It's likely that this would break some existing code, but would allow us to implement some new ideas in a more straightforward fashion, as such this would be a change made in a future major version of GATE, and so this issue is as much for open discussion of the idea as it is to track progress on making the change.