P5: Call for suggestions

At its meeting last week, the TEI Council confirmed the timetable for
the next major revision of the TEI Guidelines, popularly known as P5.
An initial release is scheduled for the end of 2004.

As announced previously (see http://www.tei-c.org/P5/ for the
background) we have a number of new chapters and a whole new
technical infrastructure in place. We are now launching a formal
request for input from the TEI community, soliciting specific
suggestions for enhancements to the current TEI Guidelines.

This initial call will remain open until August 31, 2004. The editors
will review all suggestions and determine which can be included in P5
and at what stage. A report on the results, including any changes
made to the Guidelines, will be made at the annual Members Meeting in
Baltimore, October 22-23, 2004. Further calls for suggestions may be
issued later in the year.

To help us manage this process, we will be using the excellent
facilities of the well-known SourceForge project, as well as our
trusty listserver. The TEI is now registered as a SourceForge project
(see http://tei.sourceforge.net) and over the summer we plan to move
more and more of its maintenance to that system. All suggestions
should be submitted via SourceForge. However, discussion on TEI-L is
welcome and strongly encouraged, particularly if you think your
suggestion may have broad application within the TEI community.

Here are some instructions, for those unfamiliar with the SourceForge system:

1. Point your favourite web browser at http://tei.sourceforge.net

2. Click on "Feature Requests"

3. To see what's currently there, fill in any of the drop-down menus
that seem relevant and click "Browse". (There's very little there yet
so this may be dull -- it's up to you to change that!)

4. To add a new feature request, click on "Submit New" and fill in the form

You may submit suggestions anonymously, but it will make the editors'
lives easier if you create a SourceForge account for this purpose. It
is very easy: click  "admin" or "login" and you will go to the Login
page, at the bottom of which is a "New account" link. Fill in the
details and you'll be registered in due course. Again, this is not
essential, and all useful ideas will be noted, even submitted
anonymously. However, anonymity will make it more difficult to ask
followup questions or seek clarification about details of the
suggestion, and may make it harder to implement your suggestion.

SourceForge offers a staggering number of facilities and we are only
beginning to find our way around it, so please bear with us during
this learning process, and feel free to make suggestions as to how we
can better use it.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Julia Flanders, Chair
Lou Burnard, European Editor
Syd Bauman, North American Editor