TEI SIG on Correspondence -- Minutes from the Ann Arbor meeting, 14 November 2009

We held a business and working meeting during the annual members meeting. The agenda were very open but aimed to focus on concrete milestones for future work

Attendees: Syd Bauman (SB), Markus Flatscher (MF), Elena Pierazzo (EP), Malte Rehbein (MR), Paul Schaffner (PSc), Peter Stadler (PSt), Bert Van Raemdonck (BV)

The business meeting was attended by MF, PSc, PSt and BV and - since the number of participants allowed it - was an informal talk about the different projects, the last meeting at London and the "correspDesc" PS had proposed there as well as the question whether editing correspondence from printed (secondary) material needs to treated differently than correspondence from manuscript source material. Work on the roadmap was postponed to the working meeting.

The working meeting was attended by all above mentioned participants who agreed on the need for a customization of some of the P5 elements (and element classes) for encoding correspondence. Question is of course: how?

  • P5 has introduced some elements that were inspired by what had been done earlier in DALF (P4), but not all P4 customizations in DALF are actually rendered in P5 (and vice versa). Hence, a comparison of both should be a good starting point to eventually come to a new ODD for encoding correspondence, and maybe even for introducing an actual module for future TEI Guidelines.
  • MF, PSt and BV agree on doing such a mapping together. Since BV is like the only DALF original left, he will coordinate this: he will split the work up, and will be contacting MF and PSt for further arrangements. [UPDATE: Edward Vanhoutte and Ron Van den Branden agreed to work on this with BV face to face and then get back to MF and PSt afterwards. PSt]
  • Before X-mas, there should be a conference call to catch up on how the mapping proceeds. PSt will contact Dan O'Donnell for funding.
  • Bugs and absurdities in P5 regarding correspondence should be posted on Sourceforge. Elena Pierazzo will be the liaison between the SIG and the TEI Council. She will help SIG members to report our findings through Sourceforge or otherwise.
  • The mapping should result in a new ODD. SB is willing to help us create it. The new ODD should somehow be more or less DALF-like. Hence, the working title of the ODD is 'Dalfy'. Dalfy will be an oddified version of DALF where obviously identical concepts will already be mapped to their P5 equivalents (therefore Dalfy != DALF).
  • After the mapping is done, useful elements (or concepts, structures) that are neither in DALF or in P5 yet, should be listed. Members of the SIG are welcome to suggest their own 'favourite missing elements'.
  • With Dalfy as starting point we can than try to rearrange and modify it to come to a new Correspondence ODD (no code name yet!) that should resolve all problems and satisfy all needs...
  • Issues that came up during the meetings concern <address> (and multiple addresses within one letter) (SB and EP), <signed> (everyone), endorsements as well as correspondence by committee (PSc)
  • Besides the work on Dalfy PSt shall finish his work on oddifying his <correspDesc>.

Roadmap/Milestones

  • Before Christmas: Teleconference about the mapping (MF, PSt, BV)
  • Febr. 10, 2010: Mapping done
  • July, 2010: Next SIG meeting at Digital Humanities conference (London) on new ODD