[tei-council] Editorial work after 17 sept

[Lou Burnard]

[I meant to bring this up in the call, but didn't get round to it.]

Syd and I had a brief discussion about how best to get the
copy-editing/proof-reading etc. done once the text is locked to me
for final corrections on 17 Sep.

We agreed that the chances of getting a complete professional proof
reading job done before the Members Meeting is null. We also agreed that
leaving the text unreviewed by anyone after I've had my wicked way with
it is undesirable. We kicked around the idea of drafting in some extra
hands to the job -- both at Oxford and Brown we could identify people
who could usefully and reliably do some checking if they had the time,
or we could maybe farm the whole job out to the whole TEI community.

The conclusions we reached are as follows (Syd, please correct me if I
misrepresent your view)

1. We are trying to produce the best possible online readable text we
can for the MM. We are not trying to produce a completely wart-free
professional-publication-standard document, yet. At this 1.0 release the
technical specs (the schemas) are fixed, but not (necessarily) all the
spelling errors.

2. However, we do want to make sure that the prose is clear, consistent,
comprehensible etc. That's what I am doing, post Sept 17: checking that
we always say "you do" or "one does", that the headings are cased
consistently, that set phrases such as "To include this module in a
schema..." or "This constraint cannot be expressed in the schema but may
be instantiated by means of a Schematron rule" are deployed
consistently; etc.

3. I need someone to do a reality check on what I have done and ring
alarm bells wherever I have messed up. This naturally would be the
responsibility of the other editor, and other duties permitting, Syd
is willing and able to do some of this task. (We had hoped that he
could co-ordinate its being done by others, but this looks difficult
given the current timetable).

4. Based on the recommendation of the planning committee, Council
allocated Syd the task of co-ordinating publishing/production issues,
liaising amongst James, Dot, Sebastian, and Chris. This was during
the early August conference call. On the basis of what we've seen so
far, progress on these has been good, and we would therefore like
Council to reconsider the relatively priority he should allocate to
that task.

5. Our preferred plan of campaign is that, as I complete my sweep
through a chapter I will pass it over to Syd for review. He may be able
to farm it out to someone else, he may not. Either way, there will be a
deadline (typically of a few days) by which the chapter must be either
signed off, or marked as unproofed.

We think this process is likely to result in a better quality product
without slowing down production, and without requiring more than our
already strained resources can cope with. But it does require that
Syd not be spending too much time on publishing/production issues.
Is there more to this task that we are missing, or is it reasonable
to believe that this won't eat up the majority of Syd's time during
the 17 Sep to 19 Oct period?