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.

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. I'm assuming for all sorts of expenses one uses 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. Skype (by itself) is not an option because it limits conference calls to 5 people. However, there are things which use Skype to group people into larger teleconferences, and these have been tried, but we encountered problems with a large degree of static noise. So far the other options tried have not been satisfactory.

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 at: http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/get.xml to get write access if needed contact the TEI editorial support team.

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 people from Oxford 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 and Sebastian Rahtz. They administer the SourceForge code repository and ticketing system and make most of the changes to the ODDs for the Guidelines.

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.