Minutes of the TEI-C Council Meeting, Jan. 12th, 2002

TEI-C Council meeting, Jan. 12th, 2002 Minutes v1.2

Geoffrey Rockwell

Attending: Christian Wittern (CW), Perry Willett (PW), Geoffrey Rockwell (GW), Sebastian Rahtz (SR, board representative), Merrilee Proffitt (MP), Syd Bauman (SB, editor), Matthew Driscoll (MD), Lou Burnard (LB, editor), John Unsworth (JU, chair), David Durand (DD), Laurent Romary (LR)

Initial Discussion

It was agreed that Geoffrey Rockwell would take notes.

John Unsworth provided an update on the Consortium. The 2002 budget (handed out in Pisa) predicted 57 members and 50 subscribers. We now have 49 members so we are on track. Total anticipated income $357K. $16K budgeted for workgroups (separate from monies spelled out in NEH grant).

There was a suggestion that the list of institutional members be moved to a more prominent spot in the web site as that is what impresses administrators when one is making the case that your institution should be a member. Lou Burnard said he would look into that. LBMove list of institutional members up near top of web site.

We reviewed the TEI-C Council Terms of Reference. Our priorities are to oversee changes and long range planning.

Review of P4

Lou Burnard provided an update

148 changes from the sublime to the enormous, 6 outstanding issues. It is still the intention of the changes to not break any existing documents. Lou and Syd will produce a list of outstanding problems. editorsProduce list of outstanding problems. The chapters of Character sets and WSDs need considerable revision (see below). The revised ODD system can now generate DTDs, data files used by the pizza chef, and HTML or PDF versions of the text of the Guidelines. It has not yet been enhanced to produce a TEIxlite version of the text but this is an option under consideration. LB said that it was important that such a version should not be regarded as a revisable source of the Guidelines. LB or SR Possibly revise ODD to be able to produce TEIxLite version of P4.

We talked about how workgroups submit their work and how that integrates with ODD. There is a document (EDW55) that describes how draft chapters should be submitted which this group can look at, but there is no urgency to reviewing this (unlike the urgency to reviewing EDW54 - see below.) TEI-C Council Review EDW55 - Low priority compared to review of EDW54.

Element Parent Child Issue

One of the issues that arose in Pisa was whether or not to include for each element information about the element's parents and children. Various people at Pisa felt this was useful when using the paper guidelines. Lou felt this could be misleading since the relatives listed are not necessarily available. It was agreed that the parents and children should be included in the P4 in the manner they appear in P3. Editors with help from SRAdd relative information to P4. We voted on the issue:

In the course of our discussion we discussed the possibility of providing a custom documentation tool that would produce a version of the Guidelines tailored to the project which could have the relevant relatives. SR?Develop online tool for creating custom documentation. While this is a good idea we felt the paper copy still needs P3-like relatives listed.

Call for changes for P3 to P4

The result of a call for changes to P4 didn't turn up much. Julia Flander's questionnaire had a question that may have turned up some P4 issues. John U should check with her. JUCheck with Julia about questionnaire. David Seaman may have some suggestions that he will forward to editors.

The Ibsen suggestions seem more like P5 issues, since the intent of P4 was mostly to bring P3 into line with XML. Ibsen suggestions should be deferred to a group that will review

core issues. Editors will respond to Ibsen folks. EditorsRespond to Ibsen folks.

What has to be done to finish P4

We reviewed what needs doing to finish the P4. There are three major tasks:

XML Chapter

The Council was asked for input on chapter 2, esp. 2.11 which Lou felt gets dated quickly. We felt that 2.11 should stay and be updated with reference to the W3C, stylesheets, and pointers as to where to get more updated information. LBUpdate chapter 2.

We had a discussion about URLs and how to include them. Some of the hacks mentioned included adding a URL attribute to xptr, xref, and figure (Sebastian's hack). We wondered if we should have a web page of hacks captured in the wild? We agreed that the editors will look at this and that a note will be included in chapter 14 that mentions Sepastian's hack. A proper solution will have to wait for P5 and solutions from W3C. Editors with help from SRAdd notes to P4 that mention issue of urls and provide SR's hack.

Character Sets – Chapter 4

Christian summarized the work on chapter 4. The working group found it difficult to deal with both the SGML and XML issues around character sets. It was agreed that the chapter should concentrate on XML with notes about SGML where it differs. It was noted that the xml:lang attribute and the TEI lang attribute overlap but do different things so we need to keep the TEI lang attribute. The title of the chapter might be changed to "Languages and Character Sets". Issues with the WSD also need to be dealt with. An appendix of all the acronyms would be useful along with examples of the differences between character and glyph. In short the chapter needs work. The editors will return an edited version of the chapter quickly (end of Feb.) to the working group which will then try to get it back to the editors by the end of March. Editors and CWReturn edited version of chapter 4. CW and workgroup will then review changes.

Printing P4

We discussed when P4 will go to print and how it will be printed. Lou estimated 3 months to finish the P4. John is going to try to get an estimate for print-on-demand costs so that we can compare that method to massive print job of 1000 copies. JUCheck about on-demand printing costs. No CD with Dynatext version will be published. The schedule now is:

P5

We had a general discussion of P5. We will not be constrained by trying to avoid breaking existing TEI-conformant documents in development of P5. This led to question as to what should happen with P4 when P5 comes out and what we should say about the life span of P4. Do we freeze P4 or accept only corrections for a fixed amount of time? We need to provide guidance to people who want to send suggestions.

Sebastian felt we should keep P4 around for 5 years (after P5 comes out), support software (Pizza Chef) and fix things that are actually broken for that period.

The question was raised as to whether we should say that P4 was the last to support SGML. Lou and Sebastian didn't want to go that far but it was felt we could suggest that new users use XML.

We agreed that we don't need to make announcements about the future status of P4 until P5 is out.

We had a discussion about whether TEI-C Council members who were not TEI members could have access to the member's area. John is going to e-mail the board about this but believes they need access in order to do their work. JUCheck with board on issue of council member access to member area of web site.

Lou reported on the areas where people had suggestions for P5. His list is based on a talk he gave in Pisa (see http://www.tei-c.org/Members/2001-Pisa/.) We discussed Lou's list and decided on the following possible areas for work for P5:

Character Encoding Core Tags and Schemas Metadata and Miniheaders Source Description Transcription of Primary Sources Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr Term Banks, Dictionaries and Ontologies Tags for Authoring Multimodal Communicative Acts Metrical Annotation Image and Multimedia Annotation

We first agreed that 3.3.2 was the business of the whole Council so we removed it. We then went through a process of selecting our top 2 issues to be dealt with by a workgroup. The two that got the most votes were Character Encoding and Stand-off Markup, Xlink and Xpntr.

In the second round of voting the two issues that got the most votes of the remaining issues were Metadata and Miniheaders and Transcription of Primary Sources. Thus we have the following priority sequence:

The general strategy for P5 is:

We agreed to commission two workgroups (given the money we have).

Character encoding

Christian Wittern was voted chair of the Character Encoding workgroup. The workgroup gets a budget of US $8,000. The workgroup has the immediate task of working with the editors to rewrite chapters 4 and 25 and this will involve the existing members and can be considered a continuation of their current work. (See above [].)

Once done with the P4 chapters the workgroup has is renewed for a term of one year and should meet at least once. The new membership is up to the chair. The workgroup should report at the Oct. 11th meeting. Their task is to review the proposals in extenso and propose revisions to the way character encoding is handled in general. This will involve a rewrite of chapters 4 and 25 – to reconsider the subject of character encoding and writing system declarations. A workplan is called for by the end of April, preliminary report in October, and final report in January of 2003. CWCreate Character Encoding workgroup and keep it on schedule.

EDW 54

There is a document (EDW 54) on how to make workgroups work. We need to all review this and send suggestions to editors. TEI-C CouncilReview document EDW54.

Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr

We commissioned a workgroup on Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr with David Durand as chair. David has the same schedule with the additional request that he inform us by the end of February as to who the members are. This workgroup will also have a budget of US $8,000. We do not have a formal charge for this group; one should be drawn up. DDCreate workgroup and keep it on schedule.

For the record it was mentioned that one editor should attend each workgroup meeting.

NEH Grant

John updated us on the NEH grant. The funding came in May. There was a problem with the TEI tax status so it is the University of Virginia that administers the grant. The expenses have to be billed over a 2 year period. The main thing the Council had to do was select people for task 2 (SGML to XML TEI texts conversion.)

We came up with a list of names for the 6 experts:

John Price-Wilkin (John PW), Wendell Piez, Michael Popham, Jessica Perry Hekman, Sue Fisher, David McKelvie, Frank Tompa

We decided that John should contact John Price-Wilkin and see if he would chair the group. If he agrees he should then be provided with our suggestions for names, but allowed to select his team. JUContact John PW about heading group.

We also came up with a list of possible people for the 10 who have experience with SGML texts that need converting. This list will be passed to John PW.

Julia Flanders, Lealle Fredland, Perry Willett, Louis Barch, Perseus Project, Nancy Kushigian, Tomaz Erjavec, Peter Flynn, Slave Narratives Project, Sebastian Rahtz

We would recommend to the chair of this project that he/she make a open call for groups with significant TEI SGML holdings who want to participate. The chair, who we hope will be John PW, should be provided with a schedule that includes a report to the board in May. JU and chair of NEH groupProvide chair with schedule and chair needs to keep to it.

ESTATE Grant

We discussed the request from the ESTATE project to write a letter of support for their grant proposal and approved it. The proposal is to develop TEI training, deliver it in Europe, and support two workgroups. We discussed the issues around the protocol of other groups running TEI workgroups. John U will contact the leader of Estate and clarify the language in the grant. We did feel this grant proposal was worth supporting as it will not only develop and deliver TEI training, but it will also pay for workgroups we cannot afford. Anyone who is interested in the grant should look at the proposal and get comments back to John as soon as possible. JUWork with ESTATE people to improve grant proposal and write letter of support.

Other Business

Training

We discussed training and whether TEI should certify training or develop training. We decided to form a committee made up of Geoffrey Rockwell, Julia Flanders, Perry Willett, and Sebastian Rahtz. The committee should look at existing training and develop a training strategy for the TEI. The committee should consider the question of what people are willing to pay? Training Comm = GR, JF, PW, SRReview TEI training and report back with strategy.

Certification for Tools and Texts

We discussed certifying Tools and Texts. To be able to certify things we may need to trademark a name and/or logo. John will look into that. JULook into getting trademark for TEI.

We decided that a committee should look generally into the issue of the TEI providing consulting. The members of the committee will be Matthew Driscoll, Merrilee Proffitt, and Laurent Romary. They will develop a consulting strategy for the TEI which could include consulting on software or texts. Consulting Comm = MD, MP, LRReview and propose strategy for TEI consulting and certification.

Copyright

We discussed getting copyright clearance from all workgroups and Council members. John will work with lawyers to develop such a document and we will all have to sign it. This is to ensure that the TEI-C has a license to use all the materials developed for it. JUDevelop copyright license doc and get us all to sign it.

The next meeting may be Oct. 11 in Chicago depending on funding. Rockwell was asked when these minutes would be ready and promised them for Friday.