TEI-Council-FAQ

So you've been elected to the TEI Technical Council and have some questions about how things work. This page has been set up to answer questions that new council members may have. It is entirely unofficial. See in first instance, http://www.tei-c.org/Council/

How does the Council do its work?
By every means possible. These include regular telephone conferences, endless streams of email, widely circulated discussion documents, private caucussing, public debate in other contexts such as TEI-L, and private gossip. Formally speaking, the Council meets face to face once a year (at least), and many more times than that virtually.

And what work does it do?
You should probably review the recent official work of the Council by reading the last few sets of minutes: http://www.tei-c.org/Council/ has an index page which links to them all (when we remember to update it). The minutes record topics discussed and responsibilities allocated at the Council level. Of course many Council members are also active in subgroups (formal or informal) of the Council or SIGs, which may be documented elsewhere as well.

Generally, things in Council work like this:


 * 1) A bug report or feature request is reported by anyone in SourceForge.
 * 2) Sometimes others notice the ticket and comment on it.
 * 3) Sometimes Lou Burnard makes an executive decision on the ticket.  If it's a corrigible error, he just fixes it in the appropriate ODD file(s) (also in SoureForge).  If he thinks it's not a real issue, he closes the ticket.  (If you want to comment on a ticket after it has been closed, you'll need to email Lou and ask him to re-open the ticket.) Otherwise, it's discussed at a Council meeting (conference call or in-person meeting).  Comments are recorded in the ticket reflecting the decision reached, and changes are made in SourceForge by Lou sometime thereafter.
 * 4) The change shows up on tei-c.org after the next TEI "release", which happens about two or three times a year.

However, Council does sometimes consider lengthy proposals circulated to Council outside of SourceForge and vote on them as packages, with the changes grouped together in a sensible way so they can be considered in smaller packages, or with the changes listed individually.

And what is its scope?
The Council's primary responsibility is to act as technical watchdog for the intellectual content of the TEI Guidelines. That is to say: it has the final say in just about every aspect of the TEI encoding scheme -- what elements exist in it, what they are called, how they should be used... The editors have the responsibility of ensuring that the Guidelines are intellectually coherent and well expressed, but they do not have the last word on what they actually say: the Council does.

What funding is available for Council Activities?
The TEI funds the participation of the council members in the meetings. Though I don't know of anyone claiming back telephone conferencing costs, I suppose that is possible as well, in most cases the council members' institutions probably swallow that.

If the council has a meeting, then the council members' travel, hotel, etc. will be reimbursed with proper receipts. The TEI reimburses all reasonable expenses in keeping with standard practice at most universities and granting agencies. We cover meals, travel, lodging, and other common daily travel expenses. Airfare should be economy class and direct return, unless otherwise arranged with the Treasurer prior to your trip. If you have questions about reimbursement procedures, including what is reimbursable, please email Sarah Wells, the TEI treasurer, at spw4s AT virginia.edu.

Use the TEI Travel expense form available here: http://www.tei-c.org/Admin/TEI_travel_form.pdf Expense forms should be submitted within 10 days of the end of the meeting.

Council members are not funded to attend the TEI Members' Meeting, however, there has been discussion concerning whether the council should also officially meet here as well.

How are the teleconferences held?
Currently the TEI Council uses the teleconferencing facilities provided by the institution of a council member. This involves a long distance call for most people participating in the teleconference. The TEI Council has been investigating other forms of teleconferencing, specifically VOIP-related software.

The specific details of what number to dial and what access code is needed will be circulated on the council list shortly before the meeting.

Where are the minutes of previous meetings?
The minutes of previous meetings are stored on the TEI website, see http://www.tei-c.org/Council/

How do I join the TEI Council mailing list?
We have had the practice on the Council so far that elected members get added immediately to the list (and to the telecon, if there is one), with every right to participate, while outgoing members stay on until the end of their term. The list is maintained by [mailto:dsewell@virginia.edu David Sewell] in Virginia.

Where do I find the Trac system?
In the work with TEI P5 we used the Trac system, see http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/trac/TEIP5/. Trac is a minimalistic approach to web-based management of software projects. The success was limited, but it was used to some extent, but we probably won't continue to use it.

When is discussion on an element or topic "closed" and how do I know?
Any topic can be revisited at any point, even in the published guidelines, through posting a feature request on sourceforge. Council-specific issues should be raised on the council mailing list, after having reviewed any previous discussion on the topic in the council mailing list archives.

How do I use subversion?
The TEI stores its working files in the TEI Sourceforge Subversion Repositories, this is available for read access to anyone who wishes. See the instructions. To get write access, you will need to made a developer on the SourceForge project. Contact one of the project admins whose usernames are given in bold on the SourceForge list of users.

What is the "Birnbaum doctrine"?
As expressed in TCW09: Backward Compatibility and the Maintenance of the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines, we should avoid breaking backward compatibility and only do so after serious consideration.

Why are some people from Oxford and Virginia on the Council email list, and why do they attend Council meetings, even though they are not on the list of elected members?
Part of Oxford's contribution as a TEI host institution is its "editorial support group" for the TEI—currently Lou Burnard, James Cummings and Sebastian Rahtz. They administer the SourceForge code repository and ticketing system and make most of the changes to the ODDs for the Guidelines. As such they would be allowed to attend meetings as representatives of the editorial support group. However, currently Lou Burnard is an elected member of the TEI Board and attends Council meetings as a representative, and both James Cummings and Sebastian Rahtz are elected members of the TEI Council. Any list of elected members should contain their names. Similarly the Web Master (currently David Sewell at Virginia) is also a member of the TEI Council mailing list.

I have a Question!
Then add it just above this one or email someone on the council or the council list reminding them of the existence of this wiki page when you ask your question.