[tei-council] ODD manual

[Lou Burnard]

I have now found time to unpack some of the goodies Sebastian has been 
despatching from the other side of the world. One is a preliminary draft 
for a "TEI Customization Handbook" which aims to set out all you need in 
order to adapt the TEI for your own needs.  He intended to distribute 
this to the Council before the Paris meeting, but the PDF file he sent 
was stripped by the listserv in virginia, and I was too preoccupied with 
other things to do anything about sending out an alternative.

Anyway, please visit http://www.tei-c.org/ODD/Manual/ now to see the 
draft in question.

I think the doc is a good start but needs quite a bit more work. The 
tone is closer to that of TD , the reference chapter of P5 (which it 
overlaps somewhat) than of -- say -- the TEI Lite tutorial: I feel that 
it needs to be chattier and more accessible, with plenty of simpler 
examples before hitting people with e.g. xinclude. Above all, it should 
take a more "cookbook" style approach e.g. in presenting Roma.  I think 
the order of presentation is wrong: dtd and relaxng wrappers should be 
relegated to an appendix.  The lists of classes currently in the 
appendix are necessary, but probably should be referenced from here, not 
included in the document, as we will soon have far too many such lists 
to cope with.

But I think the coverage is right: do Council members have suggestions 
for other topics they think such a document really must address, bearing 
in mind the distinction we made at the Paris meeting between
(a) reference documentation in the P5 Guidelines (TD, CF)
(b) tutorial introductions (this document)

Lou