[tei-council] Getting started

[David Sewell]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008, Peter Boot wrote:

> I intend produce a TEI document, but I don't expect people that want
> e.g. to review the document to read the XML. Which is why I assumed
> there should be a place outside of subversion to store either a
> generated HTML version or the original XML, to be transformed by the
> CMS.

As a repository for work-in-progress on "Getting Started", it seems to
me we have three choices:

1. The existing TEI SourceForge Subversion repository, under a new
directory;

2. The OpenCMS system on www.tei-c.org, in a dedicated folder;

3. Some other repository that one of us could create.

There are pros and cons to each, mostly connected with convenience and
security.

1. SECURITY.
Anything we store on SourceForge is, so far as I know,
publically viewable by anyone via the SVN browser. In addition, any
registered SourceForge user can use a Subversion client to download
everything there (that's part of the point of having our release stuff
kept there). Only TEI project members with developer status can edit
it, though. So SF is not appropriate for genuinely confidential
material.  (I doubt that drafts of "Getting Started" are in that
category.)

On the TEI OpenCMS, anything in the repository that is "published" in
the system is viewable by the whole world via the website. We could
store private material only in the "offline" state, which only
registered users could see, but that's a bit clunky--the point of
OpenCMS is to enable editing and publishing of website pages.

If we have any material we consider truly private, it should probably
be kept in a separate repository with password-protected access. I
don't think "Getting Started" drafts require that.

2. CONVENIENCE.
A directory structure in the SF repository can easily be copied to
one's local machine via a Subversion client. I haven't worked with
OpenCMS a lot, but it seems a bit clunkier at moving material back and
forth from local machine to repository. Both Subversion and OpenCMS
keep version histories, and one can view diffs in both. One major
convenience feature of OpenCMS is that it allows one-click viewing of
the XML files stored there as transformed HTML. On the other hand,
the transform uses a stylesheet that was designed specifically for the
TEI website material, which might not be optimal for "Getting
Started". It isn't hard to get a styled version of TEI-XML locally if
one has the appropriate stylesheet.

Finally, there's the question of whether we envisage "Getting Started"
in its final form as a section of the TEI website, with its table of
contents in the left-hand sidebar and text in the right content area
(in which case it would need to be served via OpenCMS); or as a
separate deliverable, like the Guidelines, which would logically be
maintained under Subversion and installed in the release directory,
by analogy with

http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/index-toc.html

Considering all of that, my vote would be for creating and maintaining
"Getting Started" on SourceForge, as I see it closer in nature to the
Guidelines than to the TEI website sections. (Particularly because it
is intended to be output in at least PDF format as well as HTML.)

David

-- 
David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager
ROTUNDA, The University of Virginia Press
PO Box 801079, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4318 USA
Courier: 310 Old Ivy Way, Suite 302, Charlottesville VA 22903
Email: dsewell at virginia.edu   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
Web: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/