[tei-council] editorial services

[Lou Burnard]

Thanks for the comments Kevin. Clarifications and comments below


> We should be careful to split "source updates" into two activities: (a)
> editing prose when specific revisions are not spelled out in a ticket or
> other proposal adopted by Council and (b) making prose and schema
> changes to the ODDs in SourceForge.  While it's most convenient if one
> person can do both technical writing and maintain ODDs, it can be hard
> to find someone sufficiently skilled in both, so we should be willing to
> consider these as separate activities in case they need to be divided
> between people.


While I agree that updating the prose requires different skills than 
changing membership of an element in a class, and that finding a good 
example for something requires a different skillset again, the whole 
purpose of ODD, and the whole way that the Guidelines  is constructed, 
requires one to think of these things all together. Changes you make -- 
or fail to make -- to an element spec (notably for example its 
description) affect what appears in the running prose, for example. So I 
don't think I accept the distinction you seem to want to make between 
"technical writing" and "maintaining ODDs". I think they are complementary.


>   From what Lou says below, these do not include weekends.  But they
> represent elapsed days, not necessarily full days of work.  That is,
> 25-35 work days pass while Council is working, but Council members are
> not all putting in approximately eight hours per day.

My "days" are no more than indicative approximations of working time 
spent/required. They don't take into account weekends, elapsed time, 
hours per day, sickness or national holidays! Just figures plucked out 
of the air really, to give some sense of the scale we're talking.

> For the newcomers to Council: while "nuncle" as a noun has certain
> meanings in British English, it has come to be used in Council to be
> used as a verb for "to steward".  If this usage sticks (and I hope it
> doesn't because we should avoid jargon to make our work more accessible
> to newcomers), we should add this to the Council FAQ on the wiki.

Fair enough. Usage will determine its survival, or not! (But don't you 
think "steward" might require just as much explanation?)


>
>   >  c. Timetable
>   >
>   >  - A ftf meeting should be held to finalise each release, 15 days before
>   >  the release itself.
>
> A face-to-face meeting of the whole Council?

Yes.

>
> Unless I'm mistaken from above statements, this would require increasing
> the frequency of Council meetings (back) to two per year.

Yes

> Will the Bylaws be updated on tei-c.org to reflect what changes were in
> fact made at that meeting in Zadar?

As Sebastian has already noted, the Board meeting in Zadar raised but 
did not resolve many important issues. We are all standing by for news 
on several related fronts.

My posting however was intended to start addressing the one that I 
personally consider to be the most important of the many challenges 
facing the TEI -- proposing an effective way to continue maintenance and 
development of the Guidelines, which I persist in believing to be the 
main purpose for the TEI's existence.  Other things (as James noted) 
also need to be considered, but one has to start somewhere.