[tei-council] Proposed agenda item: Getting started using TEI document

[Peter Boot]

Hello all,

Isn't it time for us to write a true 'getting started using TEI' 
document? Currently we have a number of in some way introductory texts, 
but most of them are not really for beginners. The 'Gentle introduction 
to XML' provides good introductory reading, but is not a guide. The 
Guidelines chapters 'TEI infrastructure'(ch. 1) and 'Using the TEI' (ch. 
23) are way beyond the innocent beginner, someone who is, let's say, 
writing a thesis on a not very well known text and wants to publish that 
text along with his thesis. The customisation page on the website is 
also targeted at someone who is already well embarked as a TEI user.

If the rest of the council thinks that would be useful, I'd be willing 
to draft such a document, perhaps together with one or two other council 
members. I'd expect such a document to be perhaps 15/20 pages long.

A getting started document should include practical things such as the 
question which editor to use and how to display the xml. The document 
would assume a Windows platform, as that is what most prospective users 
would be familiar with. The document would not be part of the Guidelines 
(which should be platform and software agnostic), but would be part of 
the website, perhaps the wiki. Wherever possible, the document would 
refer to existing documents (such as Guidelines sections).

What a getting started document might discuss is, among other things, 
the following:
- Should you use TEI?
   Should discuss: nature of material, desired result, competence
   of encoder, available technical support, intellectual and
   practical benefits, effort to be expected
- What you should know
   Reference to gentle XML introduction
   Even gentler intro into creating html from xml using xslt
   (not discuss: pdf creation)
- Overall structure of a TEI text
   header, text, body, div, head, p, lg, l
   Reference to TEI lite chapters
- Choosing and installing an editor
   (Limit discussion in doc to single editor?)
- Load, modify, validate a complete ready-made document
- Getting standard stylesheets to run
   Installing XSLT processor
   Downloading and customising stylesheets
   Running stylesheets
- Getting this to work on sample of own text
   Preparing text in XML vs. converting prepared text to XML
- Text modelling
   Choosing elements and attributes
   Extension: Modifying elements or creating new ones?
- Schema's
   Defining a schema using Roma
   Reference to 'Getting started with P5 ODDs'
   Using the schema from within the editor
- Where to go from here

Can we discuss this in Galway?

Peter