Notes from TEI Council Conference Call of 08 July 05
Contents
Review of Actions
- JC: stylesheet HOWTO
- Progress has been made, although the document is not
finished. Parts of the underlying technology that the
document describes may be changing soon. Unless there
are major such changes, James expects the stylesheet
HOWTO to be complete by 01
Aug.Action 1: JC Finish HOWTO for stylesheet module 2005-08-01
- MD: post summary of comments received on MS, with proposed responses
- The summary of comments received was posted
immediately before the conference call, and a more
thorough one is expected in one week. Action 2: MD post more thorough version of comments received, and also proposed responses 2005-07-15The comments received so far identify lots of small problems, but no major issues overlooked or gotten wrong were pointed out. Lots of classic problems that have been discussed repeatedly were also brought up. In addition, there were reports of problems (in particular missing features) that were false, i.e. the system does permit the desired encoding; this indicates either that the reviewer did not carefully read the documentation, or that the documentation insufficient. It was suggested, without dissent, that MD produce a consolidated report addressing comments received divided into those three broad categories: corrections made, documentation improved, well-trodden paths.
- MD revisions to manuscript description chapter
- Due before members meeting, MD certainly hopes it will be done by then
- Roma under Windows
- deferred, AB not present
- P5 instructions for XMetal & XMLSpy
- deferred, AB not present
- JW: P5 instructions for oXygen
- Have been posted to list and then to TEI website. JW will be adding a section on handling already existing files (as opposed to creating new ones) on the basis of useful feedback from JC.
- MD: create some examples demonstrating the different approaches (of assassinating attributes)
- MD had not done so, in the belief that the examples
included in footnotes 2, 3, & 4 of the minutes from
the Paris meeting were sufficient. LB would like
examples that are of real encodings of real-world
problems. Action 3: LB look at list of attributes that need to be assassinated, report back to Council which ones are trivial (e.g., because element is empty and there is only 1 such attribute), not difficult, or present real problems that might need this approach 2005-08-01
- SB: attributes & datatypes
- Discussion deferred to below.
- JF & PW: post discussion of various methods for handling reg of the various naming elements
- Not completed yet, but JF & PW expect to post by end of day today.
- LB: Report on progress of discussions of <index> attributes
- Done.
- JF & EV: rationalization of cert attribute
- JF reports that with EV having dropped out and no
one stepping up to replace him, she has been somewhat
delayed. Nonetheless, she is hoping to send out a draft
by next week. Action 4: JF post draft document discussing rationalization of cert attribute (see first item in section Some open issues of previous minutes). 2005-07-16
- SB: make all resp attributes into pointers
- Scheduled for end of August, still planning to do so then.
- LB: research whether loc performs the same function as cref
- LB reports this has not been done; will do so before
next call. Action 5: LB Report to Council on results of research whether loc performs the same function as cref 1 week before next call
- SB & DD: finish SA discussions of XPointer
- SB reports this was deliberately delayed due to
attribute & datatype project. Syd & David have a
meeting scheduled for Mon 11
Jul. CW is looking for a plan for how we expect
to move forward on surrounding issues (e.g., MIME type
and XPointer schema registry). Action 6: SB with DD produce brief report on process for getting XPointer schemes registered 2005-07-22
- SB: fix P5 bibliography using <bibl> , report on usability of <bibl>
- SB reports, like SA, deliberately delayed due to
attribute & datatype project.Action 7: SB BIBL 2005-09-08
- JW & NS: quick report on progress of the header element mapping
- A very brief report has been posted. JW reports that they are not expecting to recommend actual significant changes to header, but do expect to recommend the need for, and to write, instructions on using namespaces and where to put other metadata. CW wonders of TEI documents should point to their ‘parent’ METS documents.
- CW: Look at current epigraphical standards, report findings
- CW has made some progress and posted results. CW had informed the epiDoc project folks of the project in HD and a plan to produce a customization for that project, with a focus on how to describe the objects. Tom Elliot responded today and said that this sounds interesting. He sent some information about what he and others are doing and said that their main aim is more towards a ‘best practice’ approach, in other words to guide epigraphers with the encoding, rather than with the description. There are, according to Tom, debates about where to put the descriptive metadata (header vs. body) and how to do them, so any development here would be welcome. He was also happy seeing the TEI move in this direction and would welcome (and collaborate on) a possible epDescription chapter in the future.
Review of WG etc. progress
Standoff Markup
See air14
Feature Structures
LB reports that chapter is still out for review in ISO process. Meeting to resolve comments garnered during this process will be Mon 22 Aug in Warsaw.
Physical Bibliography
JF reports that Murray McGillivray has hit the ground running, posting several interesting questions in the past few days. JF has responded and will ping others in the group to respond or to drop out.
JF wants to know how closely PB should interact with MS. It was pointed out that most of the work of MS is currently in the hands of its chair (MD), and that further work is needed. It was also pointed out that the MS chapter has gaps, including collation, which it would make sense for PB to fill. CW suggests PB report to Council, which can then see if they wish to charter new group or take other action.
biblItem
SB reports that per request of Council he has made no effort in this area, pending the results of the BIBL action item (see air15 ).
IHS
Item was covered in air16 , above.
P5 progress
principles for publication of snapshots
After some discussion, there was general agreement that Sourceforge ‘releases’ (as opposed to the continuing maintenance in the CVS tree) of the source ODDs, the derived HTML, and the stylesheets that convert the former to the latter can be made without explicit Council approval. There were three suggestions on when such releases would occur: a pre-defined timetable; when significant updates occur or have accrued, based on the editors' judgement; and at Sebastian's readiness to do so. This issue was left unresolved, but it was agreed by all that a new release should be orchestrated very soon, probably within a week or two.
It was generally agreed that the HTML version of P5 that is available on the TEI website should be the same as the most recent Sourceforge released version.
directory layout
Council agreed to pursue the two-directory structure recently outlined by SR, presuming Debian does not object. SB & SR will hammer out the details over the weekend in the hopes of having a structure ready (for use by SyncRO Soft) by Monday.
on Attributes and Datatypes
Concern was expressed over the use of W3C pattern facets, particularly in the datatype tei.data.duration. There was disagreement about the general principle of whether or not the TEI should force itself to stick to strict W3C datatypes, but it was clear that the issue required more discussion.
It was generally agreed that further evaluation of the proposals would be needed before fruitful discussion could occur. It was suggested (separately) that these issues be resolved both at the ‘class’ meeting at the end of September and before that meeting.
Other business
Council agreed that an element to go inside <figure> and contain binary data was acceptable. However, the consensus was to use a more descriptive name than <bob> . It was suggested we look at what METS calls binary objects.
Council placed a standing action on the editors to produce list of changes that have been made to (the CVS source tree of) P5 one week before each conference call or meeting of Council.