[tei-council] Proposal for TEI website stable URIs and archiving

[David Sewell]

The segments of the proposal having to do with extensionless URLs and 
the mapping of release structure onto the Vault were mostly James's 
brainchildren, so I should defer to him on that. We probably should have 
explicitly mentioned the requirement for automation in the proposal, but 
we were certainly aware of it. Quoting James from our internal 
discussions: "... copying and updating of the virginia site should be 
made possible in a scriptable manner if it isn't already. (i.e. When 
happy sebastian should just run a 'updateVirginiaVault' script or 
similar and go home for supper. ;-)"

For what it's worth, extensionless URIs already appear to work for the 
existing Guidelines locations, e.g.

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

   http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-addSpan

so there must be some Apache rewrites in place already. That's not the 
case for the general pages, however:

   http://www.tei-c.org/About/charter

is broken without ".xml".

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:

> * as regards the web site making P5 more visible and prominent,
>  I think tha arguments are good, any I don't have any
>  great wisdom to add. rewriting the "P5 index page"
>  will need someone to hack the hard-wired XSL, by the way.
>
> * the versioning of releases - I have two concerns
>
>   1. that it be 100% automated. ie write a script which
>      does all the moving and making of symlinks/rewrites.
>      make it _really_ easy, else we'll forget to do it
>   2. what about all the rest of the release? you only
>      mention the HTML. the whole tree just moves around,
>      no changes which might affect relative links?
>
> * as regardless extensionless URLs, I'd like some
>  confirmation that no browers would misbehave with this.
>  are our files being delivered with the right mimetypes or whatever?
>
>  I do worry that this is a step too far. without rewrites,
>  all the existing URLs would break, and I think the rewrites
>  may be complex.
>
>
> I'd vote for doing the web site changes and the versioning,
> (as separate exercises) and holding off on the extensionless
> stuff for a bit.
>
> Finally, if we do it, lets make this a clear project with
> allowed person time, deadlines
> and deliverables. Be specific about what can be achieved
> by the next MM. I personally am sort of thinking
> I will very little time to assist on it before October.
>
>

-- 
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/