TEIWiki:IdleTalk

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Hello
This is an attempt to create a forum for general discussion on topics relevant to this wiki. Something to replace repeated entries in multiple users' discussions. For now, it is just, it seems, James and Kevin who can be counted on to discuss matters on a regular basis, but we do want to attract more people here, don't we. If we can persuade even a fraction of the community behind TEI-L to visit this place and edit here, things will definitely start rolling faster. And the larger the wiki, the more people it will attract, and so on. And once the powers-that-be notice that it is useful, perhaps they will even consider a software upgrade :-), which will stop the automated spam and make editing easier by removing some of the annoying bugs (more on that later).

Aha, I admit I didn't think long about the name of this page, so it's happily open to modification. I intended it to be something like , but the software may have a problem with the &lt; sign, and linking to it might be problematic, too. I'll try to hook it up to the sidebar in a moment, hoping it's ok with everyone.

So let's see how this works and if it works at all. Piotr 11:37, 25 September 2007 (BST)

response
Kshawkin: I've mentioned upgrading MediaWiki to James and later to Chris Ruotolo. Chris told me it will have to wait till after P5 1.0 -- that is, until at least November 2007.
 * Thanks for the info. I intended to start a topic listing the reasons for an upgrade (mostly bugs and spam-control issues), just to show that it's more than a matter of chasing the cutting edge, but I'm glad to hear that things are moving on anyway. Piotr 20:45, 26 September 2007 (BST)
 * Just to say I've talked to ChrisR and DanielP and others about this and the plan is indeed to move the wiki (and possibly a instance of Roma) to Viriginia, and one assumes simultaneously update to a newer version. James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)

A different main page layout?
Was thinking of making the main page slightly more attractive, but I haven't come far: see User:Piotr Banski/sandbox (and possibly the history of that page) for some attempts. Everyone's invited to modify it, I'm not really good at such things. (You don't have to worry about spoiling things, it's just a copy of the main page in my user space.) Thanks, Piotr 11:47, 25 September 2007 (BST)
 * Since this is a wiki, I just went ahead and put in a new version. Tried to make it a bit less dry and provide a bit more explanation for where links lead. Won't have any problem with a revert, the old version is just a click away. Piotr 20:40, 26 September 2007 (BST)
 * This seems better to me. We also need a major CSS change and should style it to look like the new website (but I suppose that should wait until it is migrated). James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)

Categories
Tried to make some sense of them (and for them). I'm a bit uneasy about the following categories and articles, and will be grateful if someone can verify both their purpose and my handling of them:
 * Category:Interfaces, Category:Extension -- are they duplicates of some subcategory of Tools and Customization, respectively?
 * XML Versioning -- it would be great to have some more info on what this is about :-) Schema versioning, perhaps?
 * There was interest at one point in possibly setting up a SIG interested in the various versioning soultions out there, including the Versioning Machine, XML Diff, SynchRo Soft's XML diff, etc. etc. but I think this is stagnant and/or rolled into the Tools sig. James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)
 * BBEdit -- an article to be expanded and perhaps recategorised
 * Category:CSS, Category:XQuery and Category:XSLT mention an address for stylesheet submission. I'm just wondering if it still works and if someone checks it. Maybe it would be easier (and definitely less time-consuming) to just ask for direct submissions into TEI Wiki (?) Piotr 13:52, 25 September 2007 (BST) Solved: stylesheets@tei-c.org: host jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU[128.143.22.122] said: 550 stylesheets@tei-c.org: User unknown in virtual alias table (in reply to RCPT TO command). Removed the address from these three categories. Piotr 00:19, 26 September 2007 (BST)
 * This address used to forward two Myself and I think Dan O'D., but it seems to have disappeared ...
 * Put Category:XQuery and Category:XSLT into Category:Tools, as they partly fulfilled the criteria (articles on XQuery and XSLT have been in that category for a while), though it felt a bit wrong, like shifting from a narrow understanding of tools as software to broad understanding of tools as including specs/languages that make your job easier. By the same token, I should treat Category:CSS alike. They just don't feel right as root categories, but "Tools" does not feel right as the sole containing category, either, it seems to me. Piotr 22:19, 25 September 2007 (BST) Still rather unhappy about that, see below.

Response
Kshawkin 14:13, 25 September 2007 (BST): Category:Interfaces does seem to be a subcategory. I've modified it to make it so. Category:Extension appears unrelated to the tools section of the wiki.
 * Category:Extension seems to duplicate Category:Customization but may have been intended as its subcategory (it mentions detailed customizations as opposed to attribute-less customizations mentioned in Category:Customization). Perhaps it was meant as a holder for special customizations to DTDs ("DTD extensions"), the way it was done up to P4? Let me nest it within "Customization" and see what happens. It definitely deserves a bit more explanation for its purpose to become clear (and/or possibly it needs to be renamed to mention DTDs directly). Piotr 21:40, 25 September 2007 (BST)
 * There may have been a misunderstanding behind Syd's modification of James's original description of the category. Went back to James's version, hoping I got it right. Piotr 21:49, 25 September 2007 (BST)
 * Created Category:DTD Extensions. Thinking of scrapping "Extension" (?) Piotr 00:26, 9 October 2007 (BST)
 * I'm unconfortable trying to use the phrase 'DTD Extensions' and 'Extension' being used where we now mean 'Customization'. The Guidelines use 'TEI Scheme' and 'Schema' throughout when referring to the general and the specific.  'Schema' is a general term that incorporates RelaxNG/W3C Schemas *and* DTDs.  See also the Conformance section of the USE.html chapter of the guidelines.  The phrases we should be using are 'Customization' for something that is 'TEI Conformant or Conformable', and 'Extension' for something which adds concepts not in the TEI abstract model.  We want people to realise that to use the TEI you should be customizing it (i.e. especially constraining and removing all those things they aren't going to use) James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)
 * I've discovered the new meaning of "extension" pretty late, indeed :-) Soo, it looks like "customization" and "extension" should be categories of equal status under the more general "schema(s)". Right? On the other hand, "customization" also sounds good as a more general term, forking into 'TEI-conform*' and 'TEI-extensions'. Sigh, tomorrow, given 7 hrs on the train, I'll finally have the time to go through the relevant chapters of the new Guidelines thoroughly. Piotr 12:16, 5 November 2007 (GMT)


 * Definitely read the Conformance section: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/USE.html#CF

Category trees
This is what the category situation looks like right now. I'm not saying this is perfect, mind you :-) Posting this info here hoping for comments and ideas for improvement. Piotr 22:50, 25 September 2007 (BST)


 * Root categories:
 * Code (CSS, XSL*, XQuery, etc.; mostly contributed samples)
 * Community (TEI-community-related)
 * Customization (pieces of ODDs)
 * Markup (mostly contributed samples of P4/P5)
 * TEI Wiki (in the TEIWiki and Help namespaces; internal docs)
 * Tools
 * Scratchpad (added around 23:04, 1 November 2007 (GMT))

The more detailed category structure is as follows:


 * Code:
 * CSS
 * XQuery
 * XSLT (subcategories: target formats (TEI:P4 and TEI:P5 may need to appear here, too) or XSLT versions)
 * HTML
 * P4toP5
 * XSLT:1.0
 * XSLT:2.0
 * Community:
 * Grants
 * Publications
 * SIG
 * Customization:
 * Extension (to be renamed to "DTD Extensions", perhaps? see above)
 * Markup (containing both objects to be described (like graphics) and specs to express the description in (like tei:p4) -- while not perfect, I think this state of affairs is bearable):
 * Graphics
 * Facsimiles
 * SVG
 * TEI:P4
 * TEI:P5 (these two, P4+P5, may also need to appear under "XSLT", as target formats)
 * TEI Wiki:
 * Users
 * Tools:
 * Administrative tools
 * All-in-one Tools
 * Analysis tools
 * Conversion and preprocessing tools
 * Development tools
 * Editing tools
 * Header creation tools
 * Interfaces
 * Publishing and delivery tools
 * Querying tools
 * Testing and QA tools
 * Scratchpad (meant for things ephemeral, added on 23:04, 1 November 2007 (GMT))
 * Archive (not sure how useful it can be)

Thought of gathering "Markup", "Code", and "Customization" under a new root category, "Samples", but each of the three categories contains more than samples (docs or software happen there), so the result would be misleading, I'm afraid. Piotr 21:53, 26 September 2007 (BST)
 * And I managed to misuse Markup, I think, by putting Comic Book Markup Language and Category:FreeDict there. Yet another (root?) category, Category:Projects, may be coming up, from what Kevin tells me. Piotr 23:04, 1 November 2007 (GMT)

Licensing
I'm uneasy about a certain possible licensing discrepancy. Call for stylesheets sets GLPL as the default license for the code samples published on this site, but under the edit box we are told that the obligatory license is GFDL 1.2 (not sure if this can be changed in the settings, and anyway, the existing 94 or so articles have already been submitted under this very license). I'm far from expert in this field, so I'll be grateful if someone could set this right or at least explain what's going on (automatic double licensing for code as opposed to documentation?). Thanks, Piotr 21:21, 26 September 2007 (BST)
 * See also: TEIWiki:General disclaimer.
 * See http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/access.xml the guidelines and most TEI materials are licensed GPL2. That material on the wiki is licensed GFDL seems more reasonable since it is secondary material and the Guidelines are more than just documentation (since TEI ODD means they are the schema source as well)  Since the stylesheets are software of a sort, we suggested GPL.  (I think at the time the wiki had no licensing notification.)  I don't think the double licensing is too much of concern -- GFDL and GPL both contain the kinds of licensing which we'd want.  I think if ever challenged in court (how likely is that?!?) I think they'd claim that either one or the other applied, or strangely both of them. (Which wouldn't be bad.)  But, IANAL. James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)

Unused images
It's possible to generate a list of images that are not linked to from anywhere, so let me post the link here, in case they can be made use of. One of them is actually a RNG file uploaded as image by mistake: Image:MyTei.rng. Piotr 21:21, 2 October 2007 (BST)
 * The RNG file was uploaded as an attempt to see if we could upload RNG (and other attachments) for download in some non-textual way. So wasn't really an error, but we just never deleted it. oops.  No one has really uploaded many images used -- so maybe if/when wiki is migrated those can be ditched. James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)

ToDo (ToBeWritten)
This ought to move onto a separate page when/if it grows, perhaps: a list of articles/subjects that seem relevant. There is also a special page where empty targets for two or more links are displayed: Special:Wantedpages. Piotr 01:14, 6 October 2007 (BST)


 * Yeah, I say just create links to pages and use the Special:Wantedpages list as a pages-to-edit list. James 03:18, 4 November 2007 (GMT)


 * Tools:
 * YAPS, yaps --> Yet Another Presentation System by Syd Bauman, see e.g. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dh2007/abstracts/xhtml.xq?id=198
 * EpiDoc, epidoc, see http://epidoc.sourceforge.net/
 * teiPublisher, teipublisher, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/teipublisher/
 * Wiki2TEI, wiki2tei, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/wiki2tei/
 * XSLTdoc, xsltdoc http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsltdoc/
 * RefDB, refdb, http://refdb.sourceforge.net/
 * AxKit, axkit, axKit, see http://axkit.org/
 * qad_doc2xml, QAD, doc2xml for Category:Conversion_and_preprocessing_tools, see http://frank-it-beratung.de/doc2xml/english.html
 * eXtensible Text Framework, extensible text framework, XTF for Category:Publishing and delivery tools, see http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/xtf/
 * xMod, xmod http://www.cch.kcl.ac.uk/xmod/
 * Projects/standards
 * Perseus Project and software (two articles?), Perseus, Perseus Digital Library, see http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ and possibly old TEI project pages
 * TextGrid, Textgrid, see http://www.textgrid.info/
 * METS, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard, see LegacyFacsimileMarkup and http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/
 * MODS, MARC, Dublin Core
 * Henry III Fine Rolls Project, Henry III Fine Rolls, see e.g. its technical page and SIG:Ontologies