Dealing with integer-valued features for CRF in mallet

Question

Hi,

I am just starting to use the SimpleTagger class in mallet. My impression is that it expects binary features. The model that I want to implement has positive integer-valued features and I wonder how to implement this in mallet. Also, I heard that non-binary features need to be normalized if the model is to make sense. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to do this.

Nick

ps. yes, I know that there is a dedicated mallet mail list but I am waiting for nearly a day already to get my subscription approved to be able to post there. I'm simply in a hurry.