Tools and methods for objective or contextual evaluation of topic segmentation

In this paper we discuss the way of evaluating topic segmentation, from mathematical measures on variously constructed reference corpus to contextual evaluation depending on different topic segmentation usages. We present an overview of the different ways of building reference corpora and of mathematically evaluating segmentation methods, and then we focus on three tasks which may involve a topic segmentation : text extraction, information retrieval and document presentation. We have developped two graphical interfaces, one for an intrinsec comparison, and the other one dedicated to an evaluation in an information retrieval context. These tools will be very soon distributed under GPL licences on the Technolangue project web page.