TEI Technical Council Teleconference, 2023-10-13

Meeting times

6:30am PST / 9:30am EST / 2:30pm UTC / 3:30pm CET

Present

• Syd Bauman (SB)
• Helena Bermúdez Sabel (HBS)
• Elisa Beshero-Bondar (EBB, Chair)
• Hugh Cayless (HC)
• Patricia O'Connor (TOC)
• Martina Scholger (MS)
• Sabine Seifert (SS)
• Joey Takeda (JT)
• Magdalena Turska (MT)
• Raff Viglianti (RV)

Special Guests (new Council members starting terms January 2024):

• Gustavo Riva (GR)

Apologies/Not Present:

• Elli Bleeker (EB)
• Nicholas Cole (NC)

New Council members: welcome, mentoring

• MS and HBS volunteer as mentors for GR and TR

Next release

• November 5–10 refrigeration, Thurs. Nov. 16 release.
• release technicians: RV, HC, and GR

Next F2F

• JT proposes next F2F in Vancouver, his institution feels happy and welcoming to host the Council, dates would need to be settled;
  • May or beginning of June would be pleasant weather-wise and efficient for DHSI.
  • RV cannot make end of May and most of June. EBB suggests all Council has a look
  • Anytime in May except Mon 20 May 2024 would be OK for Vancouver.
• However(!) next year we would have many Europeans to the Western hemisphere twice–expensive
  • SS suggests she could host at Potsdam to reduce expense
• EBB: virtual F2F a good idea? Perhaps a series of 3 weekends?
  • MT: European subgroup and American subgroup could meet in person with specialized topics?
  • EBB: subgroups meet in person and whole council meets virtually?
  • SB and RV: dividing Europeans from Americans on Council seems problematic because we’re not evenly split. Maybe better if it’s just virtual all together, or in person all together.
• EBB is prepared to host a regional DH conference and will investigate also this as an option to meet F2F.
• HC: We’re spending more than we’re taking in lately. Possibly we might want to put Council on a budget per year to have meetings.
• Action on EBB: Arrange two polls to determine format and availability for Spring F2F: One about modality (online meetings vs. in person), the other poll about availability for each person.

Urgent! TEI PR #2473 (RV and SB)

• How to handle deprecation of @calendar in att.datable
• We could remove it from att.datable now, but have to define @calendar on each of the other elements temporarily and provide a Schematron warning during the deprecation period
• Do we care about ODD-writers’ experience with @calendar if they haven’t defined the source version of TEI in their ODD? Is it enough to warn them on the TEI-L and release notes?
  • JT: warning on the e-mail list can’t hurt
  • HBS: We’ve made it easy to write ODDs, so it’s not really just for “super-users” / developers now. Providing warnings is helpful to our community.
  • SB: Should we make such a warning every time we make a change to a  class? Discussion: Maybe only when we make a change that involves reducing/removing a usage that would be associated with a deprecation warning.
  • SB: Any user complaints for changes that we have made to the class system? EBB: Should consider the ODD writers are not consulting the ODD changes as much as the Council.
• Or does it need a 6-month deprecation warning? It’s really only relevant to ODD-writers–and they should be aware of the TEI release notes.
• Policy on deprecation has not tended to worry about ODD-writers b/c they could tie their ODDs to a particular release. But in this case there are 40+ elements affected.
• JT: We should resolve the issue of the build being broken first and foremost. We can decide on the policy issues later
• SB and RV to implement the changes ASAP, and inform the TEI-L.
• RV to open another ticket about handling class deprecation.

Process of Minute Reviewing

• folder Council minutes: lengthy minutes as discussed during meetings
• folder “Review” within folder Council minutes: trimmed and corrected minutes for publication, based on lengthy minutes
• EBB: minute reviewer should review both documents
• SB: Nomenclature to distinguish the distinction between the two documents:
  • Notes - The agenda take we write notes in during Council meetings
  • Minutes - The official record published on the website.

Ticket triage (priority tickets first)

• #2451: Potentially straight forward ticket that needs quick Council perusal
  • SB: need to be clear that the date range should refer to the existence of the place. Important to distinguish between <place> and <placeName> in this context (example: Istanbul and Constantinople).<placeName> and <orgName> already in att.datable.
  • Opportunity to introduce confusion regarding where they should be placing the date range.
  • JT and RV: More on the side of using <event> for clarity about the place ie. founding or dissolution etc.
    • <birth> and <death> as semantic sugar for <event>
    • James could use ODD to create elements for founding or dissolution
    • <event> conceptually allows you to be more precise about what you mean by the dates.
  • JT and EBB: How would we handle <entity> once we introduce that? <entity> element yet to be implemented.
  • Adding attributes on <place>, <org>, (and <person>) makes it easier to process. (Makes it easier to develop a timeline for example)
  • HC proposes we add this to <person>
  • One could define temporal bounding box at top level, and nuance on the elements
  • also allow it for persons
  • No resolution yet, but let’s continue discussing as we consider <entity>.
  • It was not straightforward :)
• Need a French speaker for #2486.