TEI Technical Council Meeting,

Actions Arising

• JC: to send out joining instructions for Oxford Face-to-Face
• JC: to tell Correspondence SIG that Council recommends they look at the work of the CMC SIG to see what overlap there is.
• PWS: to contact the Standoff WG people who were in Berlin to see if they’re happy with what they did in Berlin, and whether they are intending to create a formal proposal for Council to consider.
• JC: to move forward on encouraging the object working group.
• HC: to add a Latin example which will be more generally accessible.
• ALL: send comments to council list on text-directinality, final time.
• ALL: get on with completing the tickets you have assigned to you.

Report on upcoming face-to-face (JC)

JC reported on the upcoming face to face. It’s basically all arranged. Joining instructions email will go out soon about a week. Questions?

PFS: The basic timetable is Mon–Wed. Some people will leave at lunchtime on Wed.

Email questions to JC.

An agenda will be posted soon. Please send any issues to JC.

Report on autumn face-to-face (HC)

HC: Dates are set: 2014-11-05/07 at Duke. That’s all that’s been arranged so far. [Later discussion questioned whether it was possible to rearrange these dates.] I have arranged meeting rooms, but haven’t addressed accommodation yet. Emails will be sent out in the next few months regarding travel and accommodation. We may rent a van to get people around. There are lots of restaurants in the general area, but none within easy walking distance.

Report on TEI Simple (SR)

SR: Link: document on GithubThe first proposal was made to the TEI Consortium, which agreed to put in money if other funds were available. The Mellon agreed to accept a grant application, and this has now gone in; the decision will come in July, with the project to start in August if it successful. The idea is to provide a very simple subset of TEI, especially aimed at libraries, along with a processing model, which will require the development of a language in which to express processing requirements, and a notation to give a machine-readable encoding profile for a text. JC: So ODD will acquire a facility to include processing rules? SR: Yes, it will be a way for a project to formally declare e.g. “This element is to be displayed as a block element, not an inline element.” LB: Will it also allow the specification that a particular element will be ignored during output processing or indexing? SR: Yes, that sort of thing is in scope. We haven’t done the work yet. The first stage will be to develop a proposal for changes to ODD. JC: Will there be involvement from people outside of TEI Simple, who will also want to use these features? HC: Yes, EpiDoc would want to be involved. EM: TAPAS would also be a good project to include, not only because of their involvement with ODD, but because they have been trying to handle some of the things this would enable. SR: Yes, this must be very consensual. One of the things we want to spend money on will be a couple of workshops for consultation.

Report on TEI Hackathon (EM)

EM: We put the call for the workshop on the workshop list posted on the DH2014 website, and we asked applicants to fill out our application, rather than the main DH2014 application. We got six applications before the deadline, and four afterwards. We accepted all 10. We have two or three very technically adept people and two or three at the other end of the scale – less technically experienced attendees are welcome, but should come knowing this won’t be a training session. We have great applicants. EM wondering where to set up the workshop wiki. JC: They can just sign up at the TEI Wiki. EM: OK, I’ll inform them. Do we agree that’s a good place for the content? (Yes). I’ll also ask as many people from Council and elsewhere who can constructively engage in shaping this to participate; this is going to succeed or fail based on the preliminary work, and we’re already very short on technical experts who can attend. SR, JC, EM, Alex Czmiel and SB will be there. JC: Use the Board-Council mailing list for this. Most people will be interested. EM: We need ideas on how to include some of the less experienced people. Also, if you hear of someone who would like to come, please encourage them; we don’t have a full room. It would be good to know about them ahead of time, though. No food is provided by the conference; there are coffee machines in the building, but if we want snacks or pizzas we’ll have to find out how to order them in. JC: We can cover some of that. EM: We can also talk about this in Oxford. We probably want to bring in some food, but the location may not be near food shops/restaurants. SR: I’m going to be there from Saturday, so I’ll see what I can find out. [Some discussion of Byron and his penchant for incising his name on monuments.] JC: Try to make sure you get some involvement from people on the Board. EM: I’ve been getting lots of help from SR, Arianna, JC and Alex.

Report on TEI Conference (JC)

Reminder that it is 22-24 October 2014;

Call for papers extended deadline now passed. Papers through initial review. People to be notified soon, and reject to receive feedback a bit later.

JC, MH, LB, HC and FC are all reviewers on the Program Committee, so they know what’s happening. The extended deadline for papers has now passed, so nothing more should be coming in. SB: Is MM both local organizer and Program Committee? JC: Yes, he’s chair of the PC and local organizer. LB: SR and I put in a proposal for a workshop. We haven’t heard anything. JC: I don’t believe those have been reviewed yet. I believe the intention is to review them. HC: No submitter of anything has been notified yet. LB: My reason for asking is that someone here might have reviewed it and be able to tell me that it has been reviewed. [No-one seems to have done so yet.] JC: I think only posters and papers have been reviewed so far.

Report on SIG Correspondence task force “correspDesc” (PWS)

Minutes at http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/SIG:Correspondence/task-force-correspDesc#Meetings

PWS: This is on the agenda to briefly record our progress. Please have a look at the wiki page and the minutes. Some weeks ago I sent around a little report and only FC responded. Our roadmap is that we will present at the FTF in Oxford. We have Stefan Dumont from the Berlin academy who has created a web service for interchange??? We want to add correspondence metadata to the teiHeader, and we want an interchange format for TEI Correspondence. You can see all this on GitHub. LB: What is CIF? PWS: Correspondence Interchange Format (the shorter, simpler version of the larger proposal). It’s just a teiHeader with a bibl containing correspDesc elements. LB: If I download the zip from GitHub, will I get everything I need? PWS: Yes, you’ll get documentation in the form of an ODD file, and you can generate everything else. JC: It looks very promising. What can Council do to help? PWS: Look at everything in advance of the Oxford meeting, so you’re ready to discuss it. The proposal is to add some elements. LB: It claims to have email within its scope, which is also within the scope of the CMC? group. That’s something Council will have to address. JC: Has anyone from the Correspondence SIG talked to people from the ‘Computer-mediated communication’ SIG? PWS: No, we don’t really know whether they’re active at the moment or not. JC: They had a meeting in Rome, but I don’t know whether they’re planning one for Chicago. JC:Action on JC to tell Correspondence SIG that Council recommends they look at the work of the CMC SIG to see what overlap there is.

Standoff Working Group (PWS)

PWS: I don’t really know how to proceed with this. We had a good meeting in January in Berlin, but I haven’t heard anything in response, and I would like some guidance on how to move forward. JC: I’m not aware of any other discussion going on, so you should nag the SIG. PWS: Who is formally engaged with that ticket? SB: Piotr, HC, me. PWS: I’ll send an email to the people from the Berlin meeting and to Syd. LB: Javier Pose put quite a lot of work into writing this up. I would suggest that you contact him and see if he’s happy with the work that’s been done so far. PWS: He was in Berlin, so he knows what’s happening. JC: Action on PWS to contact the people who were in Berlin to see if they’re happy with what they did in Berlin, and whether they could create a formal proposal for Council to consider. OWS: What constitutes a formal proposal? LB: A formal proposal would take the form of an ODD. JC: While that is optimal, if it’s not exactly in that format we can still consider it, though.

Object Working Group (JC)

JC: I emailed a couple of days ago asking for comments on their proposal; previously a couple of comments were passed back to Torsten; we’ve basically agreed to it, but I’ll email them again to get more response before I go forward. SR: Metacomment: NEDIMAH set aside some money for a meeting of this group, and the money might run out if they don’t use it soon. Action on JC to move forward on encouraging the object working group.

Next Release (JC)

JC: I suggest the end of July for a release. SB: I like that better than before then, for personal reasons. SR: How long between the FTF and the release? JC: About a month. The last release was in January, and we don’t want to omit things which are decided in Oxford but may not quite be implemented. JC: If we are doing a release then, what really determines the date is the person making the release. Any volunteers? We have been trying to have someone new do every release to help improve the documentation. SB: I never really got to complete my release for technical reasons, so I wouldn’t mind doing it again. EM: I think it’s time for me to give it a shot. SB and I are in the same place, so we could work together. SB: I’d be happy with that. EM: If we do that, it has to be after August 6 as I will be away until then.. SR: Let’s reconsider this at the FTF. JC: So we’re tentatively going with EM and SB together, and we can discuss further at the FTF. SB: Some of the regular support team may be on holiday in August. HC: I’m happy to do it too, although I’ve already done it. JC: The most important thing is to get enough worthy work done to make it a good release.

TEI Pointers (more or less) final draft (HC)

http://hcayless.github.io/TEI-Guidelines/Guidelines-web/en/html/SA.html#SATSHC: Will anyone complain if I go ahead and commit my work. SB: I won’t complain, but I won’t be able to review it until June. LB: It all looks great except for one thing: that the main example (text) is not easily intelligible if you don’t read Greek. HC: The requirements for the example is that you have something that’s fairly heavily marked up. MH: I’ll volunteer to try to provide alternative examples from other contexts.JC: Multiple examples will help us to demonstrate different things. HC: I don’t think we can have too many examples. LB: I love to disagree! In this context, you want to have one solid example that runs through the whole thing. EM: Would it be easier if it were in Latin, which is a roman character set? LB: Probably yes. HC: I can do a Latin example instead. Action on HC to add a Latin example which will be more generally accessible. [General agreement.] SB: You don’t want to give people the excuse to say “Pointers are Greek to me.” SR trolled about whitespace and was told to shut up. HC: The only real question is whether there’s anything that would block my merging it into trunk, or whether what remains is minor. Comments can come by email, or by posting a comment on GitHub. LB: Since this is now being considered by Council, let’s make comments to the Council list. [All agree].

Text directionality additions to Guidelines — any comments?

http://teijenkins.hcmc.uvic.ca/job/TEIP5/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/WD.html#WDWM

JC: Don’t comment on the use of non-roman characters here, obviously. If everyone has read the new content before the FTF, then it can be finally approved. Of course like any other part of the Guidelines it can be amended later. LB: Again, all comments should go to the Council list. Action on ALL: Comments to council list on text-directinality, final time.

Any Other Business

SR: Social question about the FTF: Do you want to come to my house again for dinner, or should we have a picnic in the park? JC: We can organize a picnic, and then if it’s raining, hold it at SR’s house. EM: A picnic is OK if no volleyball is involved. SR: Some entertainment (possibly a frisbee) will be provided.

JC: Reminds everyone to look at their tickets, do them, comment on them, make everyone work on your ticket if necessary. Action on ALL: Get on with completing the tickets you have assigned to you

JC: Minutes will be open for editing until Monday evening (everyone’s time), then they will be TEI-ed. Thank you all for coming and etc.