P4X revision: charactersets

[Lou Burnard]

Although we have made substantial progress in other respects, there
remain many minor details and one or two larger parts of the text of
P4X which, in the opinion of the editors, are not yet ready for pub-
lication. The current chapter 4 (Character Sets) is one such, on which
the Council's opinion is particularly sought.

The provisional working group chaired by Chris Wittern worked under
excessive pressure and with exemplary speed to produce a preliminary draft
last November; after some discussion with the group, we agreed to revise
their draft over the Christmas break but regrettably have so far been
unable to carry out this task, nor do we honestly expect to be able to
make much progress before the Council meets. For that reason, the current
P4X text has not changed since the version distributed in Pisa.

It would therefore be much appreciated if Council members could make a
point of reviewing the draft produced by the workgroup, (available at
http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/Status/p2chrev.html) and the current state of
the P4X chapter (available at http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/CH.pdf or
http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/CH.html), so that we may have an informed
discussion of this topic at the meeting. The editors' view is,
regretfully, that neither of the current drafts is appropriate for
publication in their present form, and that therefore we will have to
delay publication of P4X until further work has been done on this chapter.

We would like to continue the work already begun to that end, in
consultation with Chris and the rest of the group, and hope that the
Council will agree that this should be given high priority.

<p>Lou and Syd