Minutes v.1

[Geoffrey Rockwell]

TEI-C Council
Meeting, Jan. 12th, 2002
Minutes v.1 by Geoffrey Rockwell with thanks to Merrillee Proffitt 
who provided her e-notes to me.

Attending: Christian Wittern, Perry Willett, Geoffrey Rockwell, 
Sebastian Rahtz (board representative), Merrilee Proffitt, Syd Bauman 
(editor), Matthew Driscoll, Lou Burnard (editor), John Unsworth 
(chair), David Durand, Laurent Romary

1. Initial Disicussion

1.1 It was agreed that Geoffrey Rockwell would take notes.

1.2 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).

1.3 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. [Action Item - AI 1]

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

2.  Review of P4

2.1 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. 
[AI 2] Character sets and WSD chapters need further work. (See 
below.) The system of producing documentation (ODD) has been 
streamlined so that P4 can be generated. The ODD system can generate 
DTDs, HTML, PDF, Pizza Chef, and simplified TEI. It cannot generate a 
TEI-Lite version of the P4 yet, but that is a possible outcome that 
might be implemented. [AI 3]

We talked about how workgroups submit their work and how that 
integrates with ODD. This group should review procedures for 
submitting results of workgroups (EDW55 is the name of the work group 
guidelines document).  [AI 4]

2.2 Element Parent Child Issue

One of the issues that arose in Pisa was the issue of including 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. [AI 5] We voted on the issue:

- 7 votes for P3-like text
- 1 vote for dividing the information by tag set
- 1 vote for leaving relatives out

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. While this is a good idea we felt the paper copy still 
needs P3-like relatives listed. [AI 6]

2.3 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. We need to check with her. [AI 7] 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. John 
Unsworth or editors will respond to Ibsen folks. [AI 8]

2.4 What has to be done to finish P4

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

2.4.1 Including the information about parents and children back in (see 2.2)
2.4.2 A bunch of little things
2.4.3 Revising two chapters - the XML chapter and the Character Set 
chapter (see below for discussion of both.)

2.5 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. [AI 9]

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. [AI 10]

2.6 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. [AI 11]

2.7 Printing P4

We discussed when the 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. [AI 12] No CD will be 
published. The schedule now is:

End of Feb. - Draft sent out (with Character Set chapter rewrite)
End of March - Comments solicited for no later than end of March.

3. P5

3.1 We had a general discussion of P5. We will not be constrained by 
trying to avoid breaking 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 the 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.

3.2 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. [AI 13]

3.3 Lou reported on the areas where people had suggestions for P5. 
His list is based on a talk he gave in Pisa (the slides for which are 
up in the members area of the web site.) We fiddled a bit with the 
areas and decided on the following list of possible areas for work 
for P5:

3.3.1 Character Encoding
3.3.2 Core Tags and Schemas
3.3.3 Metadata and Miniheaders
3.3.4 Source Description
3.3.5 Transcription of Primary Sources
3.3.6 Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr
3.3.8 Term Banks, Dictionaries and Ontologies
3.3.9 Tags for Authoring
3.3.10 Multimodal Communicative Acts
3.3.11 Metrical Annotation
3.3.12 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:

3.3.2 - Core Tags and Schemas - For the entire council
3.3.1 - Character Encoding
3.3.6 - Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr
3.3.3 - Metadata and Miniheaders
3.3.5 - Transcription of Primary Sources

The general strategy for P5 is:
- Look at what the W3C is doing first
- Don't do things that others have developed standards for (like math)
- Commission workgroups for what is left over

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

3.4 Character Encoding

Christian Wittern was voted chair of the Character Encoding 
workgroup. The workgroup gets a budget of US $8,000. The workgroup 
has a term of one year and should meet at least once. The membership 
is up to the chair. The workgroup should report at the Oct. 11th 
meeting. Their task is to rewrite 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. [AI 14]

3.5 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. [AI 15]

3.6 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. 
[AI 16]

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

4. 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-Wilkins, Wendell Piez, Michael Popham, Jessica Perry 
Hekman, Sue Fisher, David McKelvie, Frank Tompa

We decided that John should contact John Price-Wilkins 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. [AI 17]

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 Kushigion, Thoma Erjavec, Peter Flynn, Slave 
Narratives Project, Sebastian Rahtz <My apoologies about mispellings!>

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. 
[AI 18]

5. 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 tranining, 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 clarrify 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. [AI 19]

6. Other Business

6.1 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? [AI 20]

6.2 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 
[AI 21]

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, Merrillee Proffitt, and Laurent Romary. They will 
develop a consulting strategy for the TEI which could include 
consulting on software or texts. [AI 22]

6.3 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. [AI 23]

6.4 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.

Please send corrections directly to Geoffrey Rockwell 
(grockwel at mcmaster.ca) and I will send out a corrected version.