workgroup charter

[Lou Burnard]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, John Unsworth wrote:

> Here's a draft of a re-usable workgroup charter.  I've used David's
> workgroup as the example, but you can probably see how the form would be
> altered for other cases.  Does this charter say enough?
>

Not in my opinion. It seems to me we have to strike a difficult balance
between too much (micro-management) and too little (handwaving). I
appreciate that John is offering this as a template rather than a finished
draft, but I really think the charter should say a lot more about what
exactly the group is intended to do. For examples of earlier wg charters,
http://www.tei-c.org/Vault/TR/tr1p01.htm or
http://www.tei-c.org/Vault/TR/tr7p01.txt -- I don't think we need to reuse
these formulae, but I do think we need to be more explicit than

> This workgroup has been chartered for calendar year 2002 by the TEI Council
> to investigate the following topic:
>
> Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr

<p>What does David think? How helpful is that as a charge? For my money, I'd
rather be given a specific list of items to be working on which I could
quarrel with, select from, add to, rather than a vague indication of
terrain.

Here's a suggestion, probably going too far in the opposite direction:

<suggestion>
The workgroup should review the following areas in which
the recommendations of P4 need reassessment:

-- the extended pointer syntax as a means of supporting external linkage
-- TEI linking attributes as a means of implementing standoff markup

The workgroup should investigate how best to achieve
interoperability between TEI extended pointer syntax and W3C standards
such as XPath, and make proposals for convergence of the two syntaxes

The workgroup should produce recommendations and best practice guidelines
relating to interoperability or convergence between TEI recommendations
and other emerging standards in this area

The workgroup should also propose explicit revisions to the existing TEI
Guidelines where this is judged necessary or desirable to achieve such
convergence

The workgroup should investigate and report on availability of software
implementing all or part of the TEI recommendations in these areas

The workgroup should begin by defining an initial workplan, with
identified milestones and deliverables, for ratification at the council
meeting in May 2002.
</suggestion>

<p>Lou

<p>> ------------------------------------
>
> TEI Workgroup Charter:
>
> The Rules and Recommendations for TEI Work Group Procedures (TEI Document
> EDW54, revised January, 2002) states:
>
> "The technical work of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is performed by
> work groups composed of volunteers from the community of those using
> electronic texts for research. The work groups are the core of the TEI, and
> the quality of their work is crucial."
>
> and
>
> "Work groups are formed by the TEI Council whenever the TEI undertakes a
> new work item which does not fit into the area of responsibility of any
> existing work group. They serve until they have finished all their
> outstanding work items, or until discharged by the Council."
>
> Full text of these rules and recommendations are available on the TEI web
> site, at http://www.tei-c.org/Drafts/edw54.html, and they should be
> consulted by all members of TEI workgroups.
>
> This workgroup has been chartered for calendar year 2002 by the TEI Council
> to investigate the following topic:
>
> Stand-Off Markup, Xlink and Xptr
>
> The TEI Council has appointed the following person as chair of this workgroup:
> David Durand
> Brown University & ingenta plc
> Providence, USA
> david at dynamicdiagrams.com
>
> The budget for this workgroup, during the year in which it is chartered, is:
>
> US $8,000.
>
> A preliminary report to the TEI Council are expected in time for the May,
> 2002 meeting of the TEI Board, and a further progress report should also be
> made in time for the annual members' meeting, in October, 2002.   Unless
> the TEI Council renews this charter at its January meeting, it will
> automatically terminate on January 31, 2003.
>
>
>