title: MALLET: How to implement crf based edit distance?
body: <p>I'm attempting to track down an edit distance algorithm that is supposedly implemented in <a href="http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MALLET</a>.</p>
  <p>I want to use the CRF edit distance algorithm as described <a href="http://people.cs.umass.edu/%7Emccallum/papers/crfstredit-uai05.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> (by Andrew McCallum et al). The authors confirm its Mallet inclusion here in the FST class:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>The model has been implemented as part of the
  finite-state transducer classes in Mallet.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>However, neither the <a href="http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/fst.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">FST tutorial page</a> - which shows an NER tagger - or the <a href="https://github.com/mimno/Mallet/tree/master/src/cc/mallet/fst/tests" rel="nofollow noreferrer">test cases</a> are of any help, at least that I can see.</p>
  <p><strong>Questions</strong>:</p>
  <ul>
  <li><em>Where</em> can I find the implementation of the edit distance CRF algorithm in Mallet?</li>
  <li><em>How</em> can I use it?</li>
  </ul>