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LX-Service: Web Services of Language Technology for Portuguese

In the present paper we report on the development of a cluster of web services of language technology for Portuguese that we named as LXService. These web services permit the direct interaction of client applications with language processing tools via the Internet. This way of making available language technology was motivated by the need of its integration in an eLearning environment. In particular, it was motivated by the development of new multilingual functionalities that were aimed at extending a Learning Management System and that needed to resort to the outcome of some of those tools in a distributed and remote fashion. This specific usage situation happens however to be representative of a typical and recurrent set up in the utilization of language processing tools in different settings and projects. Therefore, the approach reported here offers not only a solution for this specific problem, which immediately motivated it, but contributes also some first steps for what we see as an important paradigm shift in terms of the way language technology can be distributed and find a better way to unleash its full potential and impact.