mirror of https://github.com/explosion/spaCy.git
310 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
310 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: What's New in v2.1
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teaser: New features, backwards incompatibilities and migration guide
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menu:
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- ['New Features', 'features']
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- ['Backwards Incompatibilities', 'incompat']
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---
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## New Features {#features hidden="true"}
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spaCy v2.1 has focussed primarily on stability and performance, solidifying the
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design changes introduced in [v2.0](/usage/v2). As well as smaller models,
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faster runtime, and many bug fixes, v2.1 also introduces experimental support
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for some exciting new NLP innovations. For the full changelog, see the
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[release notes on GitHub](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/v2.1.0).
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For more details and a behind-the-scenes look at the new release,
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[see our blog post](https://explosion.ai/blog/spacy-v2-1).
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### BERT/ULMFit/Elmo-style pre-training {#pretraining tag="experimental"}
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> #### Example
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>
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> ```bash
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> $ python -m spacy pretrain ./raw_text.jsonl
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> en_vectors_web_lg ./pretrained-model
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> ```
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spaCy v2.1 introduces a new CLI command, `spacy pretrain`, that can make your
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models much more accurate. It's especially useful when you have **limited
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training data**. The `spacy pretrain` command lets you use transfer learning to
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initialize your models with information from raw text, using a language model
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objective similar to the one used in Google's BERT system. We've taken
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particular care to ensure that pretraining works well even with spaCy's small
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default architecture sizes, so you don't have to compromise on efficiency to use
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it.
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<Infobox>
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**API:** [`spacy pretrain`](/api/cli#pretrain) **Usage: **
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[Improving accuracy with transfer learning](/usage/training#transfer-learning)
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</Infobox>
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### Extended match pattern API {#matcher-api}
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> #### Example
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>
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> ```python
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> # Matches "love cats" or "likes flowers"
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> pattern1 = [{"LEMMA": {"IN": ["like", "love"]}}, {"POS": "NOUN"}]
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> # Matches tokens of length >= 10
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> pattern2 = [{"LENGTH": {">=": 10}}]
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> # Matches custom attribute with regex
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> pattern3 = [{"_": {"country": {"REGEX": "^([Uu](\\.?|nited) ?[Ss](\\.?|tates)"}}}]
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> ```
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Instead of mapping to a single value, token patterns can now also map to a
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**dictionary of properties**. For example, to specify that the value of a lemma
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should be part of a list of values, or to set a minimum character length. It now
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also supports a `REGEX` property, as well as set membership via `IN` and
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`NOT_IN`, custom extension attributes via `_` and rich comparison for numeric
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values.
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<Infobox>
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**API:** [`Matcher`](/api/matcher) **Usage: **
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[Extended pattern syntax and attributes](/usage/rule-based-matching#adding-patterns-attributes-extended),
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[Regular expressions](/usage/rule-based-matching#regex)
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</Infobox>
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### Easy rule-based entity recognition {#entity-ruler}
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> #### Example
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>
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> ```python
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> from spacy.pipeline import EntityRuler
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> ruler = EntityRuler(nlp)
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> ruler.add_patterns([{"label": "ORG", "pattern": "Apple"}])
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> nlp.add_pipe(ruler, before="ner")
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> ```
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The `EntityRuler` is an exciting new component that lets you add named entities
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based on pattern dictionaries, and makes it easy to combine rule-based and
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statistical named entity recognition for even more powerful models. Entity rules
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can be phrase patterns for exact string matches, or token patterns for full
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flexibility.
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<Infobox>
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**API:** [`EntityRuler`](/api/entityruler) **Usage: **
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[Rule-based entity recognition](/usage/rule-based-matching#entityruler)
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</Infobox>
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### Phrase matching with other attributes {#phrasematcher}
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> #### Example
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>
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> ```python
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> matcher = PhraseMatcher(nlp.vocab, attr="POS")
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> matcher.add("PATTERN", None, nlp(u"I love cats"))
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> doc = nlp(u"You like dogs")
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> matches = matcher(doc)
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> ```
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By default, the `PhraseMatcher` will match on the verbatim token text, e.g.
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`Token.text`. By setting the `attr` argument on initialization, you can change
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**which token attribute the matcher should use** when comparing the phrase
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pattern to the matched `Doc`. For example, `LOWER` for case-insensitive matches
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or `POS` for finding sequences of the same part-of-speech tags.
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<Infobox>
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**API:** [`PhraseMatcher`](/api/phrasematcher) **Usage: **
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[Matching on other token attributes](/usage/rule-based-matching#phrasematcher-attrs)
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</Infobox>
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### Retokenizer for merging and splitting {#retokenizer}
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> #### Example
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>
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> ```python
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> doc = nlp(u"I like David Bowie")
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> with doc.retokenize() as retokenizer:
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> attrs = {"LEMMA": u"David Bowie"}
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> retokenizer.merge(doc[2:4], attrs=attrs)
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> ```
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The new `Doc.retokenize` context manager allows merging spans of multiple tokens
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into one single token, and splitting single tokens into multiple tokens.
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Modifications to the `Doc`'s tokenization are stored, and then made all at once
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when the context manager exits. This is much more efficient, and less
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error-prone. `Doc.merge` and `Span.merge` still work, but they're considered
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deprecated.
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<Infobox>
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**API:** [`Doc.retokenize`](/api/doc#retokenize),
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[`Retokenizer.merge`](/api/doc#retokenizer.merge),
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[`Retokenizer.split`](/api/doc#retokenizer.split)<br />**Usage:
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**[Merging and splitting](/usage/linguistic-features#retokenization)
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</Infobox>
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### Components and languages via entry points {#entry-points}
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> #### Example
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>
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> ```python
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> from setuptools import setup
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> setup(
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> name="custom_extension_package",
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> entry_points={
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> "spacy_factories": ["your_component = component:ComponentFactory"]
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> "spacy_languages": ["xyz = language:XYZLanguage"]
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> }
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> )
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> ```
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Using entry points, model packages and extension packages can now define their
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own `"spacy_factories"` and `"spacy_languages"`, which will be added to the
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built-in factories and languages. If a package in the same environment exposes
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spaCy entry points, all of this happens automatically and no further user action
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is required.
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<Infobox>
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**Usage:** [Using entry points](/usage/saving-loading#entry-points)
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</Infobox>
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### Improved documentation {#docs}
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Although it looks pretty much the same, we've rebuilt the entire documentation
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using [Gatsby](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/) and [MDX](https://mdxjs.com/). It's
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now an even faster progressive web app and allows us to write all content
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entirely **in Markdown**, without having to compromise on easy-to-use custom UI
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components. We're hoping that the Markdown source will make it even easier to
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contribute to the documentation. For more details, check out the
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[styleguide](/styleguide) and
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[source](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/tree/master/website). While
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converting the pages to Markdown, we've also fixed a bunch of typos, improved
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the existing pages and added some new content:
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- **Usage Guide:** [Rule-based Matching](/usage/rule-based-matching)<br/>How to
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use the `Matcher`, `PhraseMatcher` and the new `EntityRuler`, and write
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powerful components to combine statistical models and rules.
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- **Usage Guide:** [Saving and Loading](/usage/saving-loading)<br/>Everything
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you need to know about serialization, and how to save and load pipeline
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components, package your spaCy models as Python modules and use entry points.
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- **Usage Guide: **
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[Merging and Splitting](/usage/linguistic-features#retokenization)<br />How to
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retokenize a `Doc` using the new `retokenize` context manager and merge spans
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into single tokens and split single tokens into multiple.
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- **Universe:** [Videos](/universe/category/videos) and
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[Podcasts](/universe/category/podcasts)
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- **API:** [`EntityRuler`](/api/entityruler)
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- **API:** [`Sentencizer`](/api/sentencizer)
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- **API:** [Pipeline functions](/api/pipeline-functions)
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## Backwards incompatibilities {#incompat}
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<Infobox title="Important note on models" variant="warning">
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If you've been training **your own models**, you'll need to **retrain** them
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with the new version. Also don't forget to upgrade all models to the latest
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versions. Models for v2.0.x aren't compatible with models for v2.1.x. To check
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if all of your models are up to date, you can run the
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[`spacy validate`](/api/cli#validate) command.
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</Infobox>
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- Due to difficulties linking our new
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[`blis`](https://github.com/explosion/cython-blis) for faster
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platform-independent matrix multiplication, this release currently **doesn't
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work on Python 2.7 on Windows**. We expect this to be corrected in the future.
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- While the [`Matcher`](/api/matcher) API is fully backwards compatible, its
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algorithm has changed to fix a number of bugs and performance issues. This
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means that the `Matcher` in v2.1.x may produce different results compared to
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the `Matcher` in v2.0.x.
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- The deprecated [`Doc.merge`](/api/doc#merge) and
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[`Span.merge`](/api/span#merge) methods still work, but you may notice that
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they now run slower when merging many objects in a row. That's because the
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merging engine was rewritten to be more reliable and to support more efficient
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merging **in bulk**. To take advantage of this, you should rewrite your logic
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to use the [`Doc.retokenize`](/api/doc#retokenize) context manager and perform
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as many merges as possible together in the `with` block.
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```diff
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- doc[1:5].merge()
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- doc[6:8].merge()
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+ with doc.retokenize() as retokenizer:
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+ retokenizer.merge(doc[1:5])
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+ retokenizer.merge(doc[6:8])
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```
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- The serialization methods `to_disk`, `from_disk`, `to_bytes` and `from_bytes`
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now support a single `exclude` argument to provide a list of string names to
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exclude. The docs have been updated to list the available serialization fields
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for each class. The `disable` argument on the [`Language`](/api/language)
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serialization methods has been renamed to `exclude` for consistency.
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```diff
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- nlp.to_disk("/path", disable=["parser", "ner"])
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+ nlp.to_disk("/path", exclude=["parser", "ner"])
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- data = nlp.tokenizer.to_bytes(vocab=False)
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+ data = nlp.tokenizer.to_bytes(exclude=["vocab"])
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```
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- The .pos value for several common English words has changed, due to
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corrections to long-standing mistakes in the English tag map (see
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[issue #593](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/issues/593) and
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[issue #3311](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/issues/3311) for details).
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- For better compatibility with the Universal Dependencies data, the lemmatizer
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now preserves capitalization, e.g. for proper nouns. See
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[issue #3256](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/issues/3256) for details.
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- The built-in rule-based sentence boundary detector is now only called
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`"sentencizer"` – the name `"sbd"` is deprecated.
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```diff
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- sentence_splitter = nlp.create_pipe("sbd")
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+ sentence_splitter = nlp.create_pipe("sentencizer")
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```
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- The `is_sent_start` attribute of the first token in a `Doc` now correctly
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defaults to `True`. It previously defaulted to `None`.
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- The keyword argument `n_threads` on the `.pipe` methods is now deprecated, as
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the v2.x models cannot release the global interpreter lock. (Future versions
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may introduce a `n_process` argument for parallel inference via
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multiprocessing.)
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- The `Doc.print_tree` method is now deprecated. If you need a custom nested
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JSON representation of a `Doc` object, you might want to write your own helper
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function. For a simple and consistent JSON representation of the `Doc` object
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and its annotations, you can now use the [`Doc.to_json`](/api/doc#to_json)
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method. Going forward, this method will output the same format as the JSON
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training data expected by [`spacy train`](/api/cli#train).
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- The [`spacy train`](/api/cli#train) command now lets you specify a
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comma-separated list of pipeline component names, instead of separate flags
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like `--no-parser` to disable components. This is more flexible and also
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handles custom components out-of-the-box.
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```diff
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- $ spacy train en /output train_data.json dev_data.json --no-parser
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+ $ spacy train en /output train_data.json dev_data.json --pipeline tagger,ner
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```
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- The [`spacy init-model`](/api/cli#init-model) command now uses a `--jsonl-loc`
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argument to pass in a a newline-delimited JSON (JSONL) file containing one
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lexical entry per line instead of a separate `--freqs-loc` and
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`--clusters-loc`.
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```diff
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- $ spacy init-model en ./model --freqs-loc ./freqs.txt --clusters-loc ./clusters.txt
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+ $ spacy init-model en ./model --jsonl-loc ./vocab.jsonl
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```
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- Also note that some of the model licenses have changed:
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[`it_core_news_sm`](/models/it#it_core_news_sm) is now correctly licensed
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under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, and all [English](/models/en) and [German](/models/de)
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models are now published under the MIT license.
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