[tei-council] Another version
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
daniel.odonnell at uleth.ca
Tue Dec 9 14:01:10 EST 2008
On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 16:23 +0000, Lou Burnard wrote:
> Yes, I object. See my proposals of earlier today.
I read through your material earlier in the day, and didn't see your
proposal for separate "powered by" and "our technology" buttons as
precluding the use of P5 in a "powered by" button. Sorry about that.
Basically, I understood you to be establishing two different types of
buttons: an identification button for indicating the use of TEI (the
"powered by" button), and a functional button for linking to
meta-discussions of specific implementations (the "our technology
button"). I understood "Precisely two" to refer to types of buttons, not
to mean "only two buttons," since at the very least we might want to
follow the W3C at some point and issue variants in alternate colours.
I can see why one might think that "Powered by TEI P5" looks like it
confuses the distinction between the "Powered by" and "Our Technology"
series. But P5 is both a technical spec and a brand, and I think you'll
find that some people want to identify themselves specifically as users
of P5. Moreover, there is still a (slight) sense among some members of
the broader community that P5 is "too hard" (indeed only yesterday we
had a touch of this in a discussion on TEI-L). Allowing people to choose
to express allegiance to TEI P5 if they wish to say something more
specific than "Powered by TEI" is good for promoting the new standard in
the community, as it will help indicate the breadth of adoption.
(If Tite continues the way it is going, moreover, it would not at all
surprise me to see that we end up eventually wanting to brand it in a
similar way to market the fact that it is being used widely in its
specific community as well).
I suppose we could make up specific "Our technology" buttons for
different official versions and customisations like P5 and Tite, but to
be honest that sounds like more of a hornets nest than having a couple
of "Powered by" buttons for specific lines and the general case.
Anyway, let me try to restate the emerging consensus at Council again,
to see if I've got the areas of agreement and disagreement right:
1. Council thinks that we should be considering two distinct
buttons or types of buttons that are visually complementary:
1. A "Powered by TEI" button or series that users attach to
their sites to indicate that they use the TEI in some
way.
2. A "Our Technology: TEI" button or series that users
attach to their site to refer people more specifically
to some kind of meta-discussion about the precise type
of TEI they are using--with whether this means a
reference to Guidelines version, encoding practices,
ODD, or something else being left up to the user.
2. In general we leave the precise use of these buttons to the user
to decide, though we can write a general discussion of how we
understand the distinction and perhaps provide some example code
that (especially in the case of the "powered by" button) could
dropped into a website as is.
3. We disagree as to whether what I've described as "series" above
should involve a single button in each case or a set of two or
more alternate buttons. In particular we disagree in the case of
the "Powered by" series, where there are competing proposals to
have either a single "Powered by TEI" button or a series
involving at least initially "Powered by TEI" and "Powered by
TEI P5," and perhaps later other official versions (such as
"Powered by TEI Tite").
If this accurately expresses the current state of our discussion at
Council, then I think we have something to pass on to the designer and
then the board. Lou's division of the two types of buttons is an
important technical consideration and as a member of the Board he'll be
able to speak to the question of why we should not go with the option of
having "Powered by TEI P5" (and perhaps Tite, later on) alongside
"Powered by TEI" (As indeed, I'll speak to the issue of why we should
have more than one option there from a branding perspective). And there
are certainly non-technical issues to be added: this discussion has got
me thinking that we should probably consider at the Board whether a
third Subscriber/Member/Host button series might not also be really
useful.
So how does this sound: we ask the designer, if David is able to arrange
one, to design three different types of buttons that are visually
distinct, but clearly associated with each other:
1. A "Powered by" series of alternate buttons including:
"Powered by TEI" and "Powered by TEI P5"; this later
design should be potentially expandable to other things,
like "Tite"; alternates in the series should be
essentially similar in design as (if we go with more
than one) they would not normally be used together.
2. A "Our Technology: TEI" button: this should be visually
distinct (though obviously related to) the "Powered by"
button(s) as it might be used alongside them.
3. A "TEI: Member," "TEI: Subscriber," "TEI Host" button
that is again visually distinct from but related to the
others as it may also be used alongside #1 and #2.
The designer may or may not want to take inspiration from any of the
draft designs we've discussed. But whatever the result is it should be
something that one could put in the same place one puts the W3C badges
(i.e. about that size, though I think we should leave the rest up to him
or her).
This propoal includes more than some people think we should ask for,
obviously, but as far as I can see it doesn't _exclude_ anything
somebody thinks we should consider. And once the basic template is
established, from a design perspective changing the wording is
relatively simple.
Since I brought this to council, I'd like to call question on our
discussion if there are no serious objections. If there is some reason
why it is unreasonable to ask for this mix of options, let us know. If
there aren't any, maybe we can hand it over to David tomorrow?
-dan
>
>
> Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
> > I'm happy to go with any of the models--or with something new cooked up
> > by the designer. As long as it happens. Formally, this will then be
> > passed on to the board for approval.
> >
> > So to answer David's question: what text do we give the designer? Is
> > there any objection to:
> >
> > "Powered by TEI P5" (with a final XML allowed or not if the designer can
> > use or needs it)
> >
> > and
> >
> > "Powered by TEI" (with a final XML allowed or not if the designer can
> > use or needs it)
> >
> > -dan
> >
> > On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 16:19 +0100, Laurent Romary wrote:
> >> I guess so (even if I like the icen without even any text...).
> >> Sorry for being pushy ;-)
> >> Laurent
> >>
> >> Le 9 déc. 08 à 15:53, David Sewell a écrit :
> >>
> >>> On Tue, 9 Dec 2008, Laurent Romary wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I also liked Chris's version (sorry, Daniel ;-)). I mean: http://www.tei-c.org/About/website.xml
> >>>> And I also agree on the general sense of simplicity we want to attach
> >>>> to this endeavor.
> >>>>
> >>>> So let's take that as an action point on David as soon as he wakes
> >>>> up.
> >>> Laurent, you are indeed a strict taskmaster! OK if I have a cup of
> >>> coffee first? :-)
> >>>
> >>> --Anyway, I will find out whether our Web designer has time in the
> >>> near
> >>> future, and whether the UVa Press can cover the cost of his labor for
> >>> this. (I think we can consider it part of the U of Virginia host
> >>> contribution for the Consortium.) The designer will need to know
> >>> exactly
> >>> what text to include, so is there agreement that "Powered by TEI" is
> >>> what the icon should say?
> >>>
> >>> 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/
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