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Time to Review the Slide Deck for "It's Time for P6"!
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 07 Aug '26

07 Aug '26

Dear Council and James, Our slide prep team (consisting of Raff, Martina, and me) has now completed a draft of our slide deck for Council’s panel, “It’s Time for P6!“. Would you each and all please review this deck? - You can view the slides in a web browser here: https://teic.github.io/timeForP6/ - This is prepared with reveal.js (which means you can build it in localhost with Node.js by running npm install )… - It’s in a TEI-C repo with TEI-Council team access ( https://github.com/TEIC/timeForP6) so you can edit the index.html, open a PR for review, or just push small revisions. But you may just want to request one of us on the deck team to make a change. - If you'd urgently like to revise something, let us know in the #council channel on Slack! Also you should feel free to push a new slide or two (though we think we have enough content here to spark discussion with the audience for the time we have.) - James Cummings, as our moderator, you should feel free to push any slides you wish the end of this if helpful to make respondent / moderator comments + questions! Raff, Martina, and I will keep an eye on the slide deck for revisions, but it’ll be helpful if we let each other know on Slack if changes are coming in! Thanks, everyone! Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org

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Freeze! Release 4.12.0 / 7.61.0 in progress
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 28 Jul '26

28 Jul '26

Dear Council, This is to announce that we are in a state of "Freeze"! We are in the midst of a release, and have created release branches for the Guidelines version 4.12.0 and Stylesheets version 7.61.0. Please do not push to the dev branch of either the Guidelines or the Stylesheets repositories until we announce that these are safe for pushing again. Wish us luck in our multi-time-zone release adventure between Martina, Martin, and me! Feel free to cheer us on in the #release branch of the Slack channel! Cheers, Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org

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Refridge: Release coming soon! And P6 Panel Preparations
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 24 Jul '26

24 Jul '26

Dear Council, It's a busy time for the TEI! A reminder that we are in the Refrigeration stage before our next release, scheduled for Tuesday July 28. Please push only prose changes to `dev` branch now until we announce the freeze. If there's more substantial work to conclude, please check with us release techs (Martina, Martin, and me). Check in on the release channel if you'd like to be part of the fun of preparations. (Like, what should we name this release?) You can also help us with preparing notes for our panel at the TEI Conference: "It's Time for P6". * You can add some notes / comments on this Google Doc <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c32lC74UkiwaHOHuTu2pJx1XxEZEJZZOmp8a9F4…>where we're assembling ideas for the panel; * Here's our original panel proposal; <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X_ozsb89701eBeDxeAWVd8U2JH2hXEQ9YACGhv6…> * We'll develop a slide deck here (https://github.com/TEIC/timeForP6) Thanks, everyone! Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org

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Fwd: About TEI projects
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 09 May '26

09 May '26

Hi Council, This morning I received a curious message addressed to a pretty rarely-used e-mail address: council(a)tei-c.org with subject line: "About TEI projects". I wonder if any of us have met the sender, Lebron Letchev? He seems to be someone with a technical background, very keen on databases, and having some difficulty, possibly some irritation about understanding what TEI is for. I momentarily forgot that only the Council chair receives mail at this address (possibly previous Council chairs too). He sounds a little like a crank, so I hesitated to reply to his message, but I found my way to a reply that I hope is useful, and potentially helpful when we meet others who don't understand why we TEI. I'm forwarding his message and my reply as a curiosity. Cheers, Elisa ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Elisa Beshero-Bondar <ebbondar(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, May 9, 2026 at 12:07 PM Subject: Re: About TEI projects To: LEBRON LETCHEV <lebronletchev(a)gmail.com> Dear Lebron (if I may), The TEI is not a product for sale, so I do not understand your question about purchasing a "package". The TEI certainly does provide guidance on document data modeling for cultural heritage projects, and it is supported by a number of databases that handle XML structures, such as the free and open source eXist-dB. TEI XML may be stored and indexed and retrieved in a database, but it is not restricted to this use. Using TEI is simply a decision, and perhaps it is called for when information is more complex than you can describe in columns. Why would people ever turn to the TEI to represent data? Let me present you an example application of the TEI that does not involve database software and that expresses its TEI semantics directly in the web browser. The project involves study of an ancient manuscript written in a language that is unknown today: * The manuscript contains images of plants and animals and people that can be categorized, studied, conjectured about. It also contains glyphs that people have been attempting to study. * The organization of the pages in the manuscript is a little unusual: We can see a regular pattern of how the vellum was folded and cut and organized into bundles, but in some places, leaves have been torn out, and there is some damage on some of the surfaces. * There is evidence of multiple "hands" writing on the page surfaces. * The page surfaces themselves contain material evidence of how the manuscript was made and how it was bound and shared over time among collectors. Scholars are attempting to trace where it originated. A feature of TEI XML for scholars is that it is designed to express what is known and recognized, and also to identify precisely what is unknown. It is exemplary and powerful for organizing metadata (data about the data) in either "stand-off" or "inline" ways as helpful: with annotations running within the markup structures pinned to external reference structures. Much of this will feel like working with a database, but it is not restricted to database technologies. The case we describe here is one that has lately involved migration: * from one format of ASCII representation in a nonstandard text format used by the manuscript researchers, and * into the TEI, for the purpose of organizing the information, representing the document, and its metadata in a standard way that is recognized and workable for scholars around the world. The TEI XML data of this project can be itself stored and processed with a database, but it is also a standalone document in its own right, expressing and recording information in a way that is both human- and machine-readable. The scholar working on transforming this to TEI was also thinking of how to represent and share the work. She indicated in a project meeting that she did not want to lose the meaningful encoding of the TEI in publishing it on a website, because HTML elements are too simply about representation than about meaning. When she indicated this, we realized that she would best work with CETEIcean (https://teic.github.io/CETEIcean/) a JavaScript library developed to express the TEI directly in the web browser without losing semantics, and instead, enhancing them with CSS and interactive JS where this would be advantageous. Similar to our scholar's recognition that HTML would be too simple and "lossy", the grid structure of a database may also oversimplify patterns of data that can be intricately "deep" in places and entirely blank in others. Databases can be useful in retrieving TEI data and indexing it, and specialized databases exist that help with creating search engines that support websites, but databases are not the only way to work with TEI data. Many of us in the TEI community like to work with databases as you do, but the TEI is not itself bound to database software. TEI is specifically designed to outlast changes in software and technologies and is simply an interchange format for representing document data. I hope this helps you to understand the TEI and why people choose to use it in projects. All best, Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org On Sat, May 9, 2026 at 6:06 AM LEBRON LETCHEV <lebronletchev(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I want to know exactly what is the difference between encoding a text > (title, author, year, publisher, and so on) and create a database with > heads like title, author, year, publisher, and so on. According to link > https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/encoding-texts-tei-1#a-minimal-…, > in "A Minimal TEI Document", the body contains the similar text that a > database memo would contain and the "encoding" title, name, publishing > could be arranged into a database in separated columns. > > I work with academic projects since 2001, I have some interesting projects > online, now all of them under "recosntruction" after cloudflare. Sincerely > speaking I love databases. I would like to know why must I buy your package > instead to use a free database with programming evidently. > > In short, its essential a database behind the scene, all data are storage > in a database. Html/CSS are used in the front end, so where stay the TEI? > > Best regards > > LL >

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May Council Meetings
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 06 May '26

06 May '26

Dear Council, Most of us have now responded to Torsten's general calendar poll regarding your availability in May and June. That poll at this late moment indicates that Wednesday dates are best for most of the group, for 90-minute meetings to begin at *9am PDT | noon EDT | 5pm BST | 6pm CEST*. We'll proceed to meet on: * *Wednesday May 6 *(in two days), for a meeting on P5 * *Wednesday May 20* for a meeting on P6. I'll post these on our Google Calendar and we'll circulate the agendas on Slack. The Zoom link will be the same as usual: - https://psu.zoom.us/j/98850059066?pwd=UzhBL2NFc1lweWYzS2xZd2dqYVZpdz09 - Meeting ID: 988 5005 9066 - Password: tei Thanks, everyone! Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org

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April Council Call: Friday April 10? You decide...(Slack Poll)
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 07 Apr '26

07 Apr '26

Greetings, TEI Council! We've had a difficult time sorting out an April meeting, but we've winnowed down the options to Friday April 10 or Friday April 24. For the details, please see the Council Slack channel, where I launched a Slack poll to help us decide on which of the two dates / times to go with. I have not heard from 4 of you, but at the moment, the vote stands 7 to 6 in favor of meeting this Friday April 10 6:30 – 8am PDT | 9:30 - 11am EDT | 2:30 – 4pm BST | 3:30 – 5pm CEST. I'd like to decide this tomorrow so we can be ready for the meeting this Friday if it shall indeed be then! Thanks, everyone! Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org

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Reminder (by Tues March 24): Finalize Vote for April Council Meeting Times
by Elisa Beshero-Bondar 24 Mar '26

24 Mar '26

Dear Council, Just a reminder: Would each of you check that you've indeed voted in the current WhenAvailable poll? As of today, I see only 6 of you have responded. This poll is to help us set our meeting dates for April and after. Here's the current poll: https://whenavailable.com/invite/JlwnUrXnj9pjbQNsgczt You may have voted in my original, poorly conceived poll that would only work for dates before March 29 (prior to the Europe change to Summer Time). We decided to start over with a new calendar poll that is due to close on March 24. (I'll shift it to close on March 25 since I'm late in reminding you all.) Thanks, everyone! Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD TEI Technical Council Chair Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College Development site: https://newtfire.org

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Freeze is lifted!
by Patricia O'Connor 18 Feb '26

18 Feb '26

Dear all, Helena, Torsten, and I have successfully released the Guidelines 4.11.0 and the Stylesheets 7.60.0. The freeze is lifted, please feel free to push to dev again. Best, Trisha Dr Patricia O Connor (she/her) PhD in Digital Humanities and Old English TEI Technical Council Member, TEI-C <https://tei-c.org/activities/council/> 2023-2028 Digital Officer of Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland (TOEBI <https://www.toebi.org.uk/committee/>) Research Assistant, OG(H)AM <https://ogham.glasgow.ac.uk/index.php/project-team/> 2024-2025 Research Assistant, RESCAPE <https://www.chartes.psl.eu/en/patricia-o-connor> 2023-2024 Research Assistant, Transatlantic Intellectual Networks <https://research.ncl.ac.uk/atnu/projects/transatlanticintellectualnetworks/> 2022 Research Assistant, CLASP <https://clasp.ell.ox.ac.uk/> 2021-2022 TEI Communications Officer, TEI-C <https://tei-c.org/> 2021-2023 Research Assistant, School of English, UCC 2020 Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar 2016-2018 Web: www.research.ie Twitter <https://twitter.com/trishaoconnor88> - LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-o-connor-7653ba55/> - Website <http://trishaoconnor.com/>

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Freeze announcement
by Patricia O'Connor 17 Feb '26

17 Feb '26

Dear all, As we are releasing TEI version 4.11.0 and the Stylesheets version 7.60.0 tomorrow, we have created the release branches and are now officially in freeze. Please do not commit any changes to the dev or release branches until the release is finished. We will send a follow up notice once the release is complete. Kind regards, Trisha Dr Patricia O Connor (she/her) PhD in Digital Humanities and Old English TEI Technical Council Member, TEI-C <https://tei-c.org/activities/council/> 2023-2028 Digital Officer of Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland (TOEBI <https://www.toebi.org.uk/committee/>) Research Assistant, OG(H)AM <https://ogham.glasgow.ac.uk/index.php/project-team/> 2024-2025 Research Assistant, RESCAPE <https://www.chartes.psl.eu/en/patricia-o-connor> 2023-2024 Research Assistant, Transatlantic Intellectual Networks <https://research.ncl.ac.uk/atnu/projects/transatlanticintellectualnetworks/> 2022 Research Assistant, CLASP <https://clasp.ell.ox.ac.uk/> 2021-2022 TEI Communications Officer, TEI-C <https://tei-c.org/> 2021-2023 Research Assistant, School of English, UCC 2020 Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar 2016-2018 Web: www.research.ie Twitter <https://twitter.com/trishaoconnor88> - LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-o-connor-7653ba55/> - Website <http://trishaoconnor.com/>

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Next Stylesheets meeting: Wednesday Jan 28th
by H B S 27 Jan '26

27 Jan '26

Dear all, The next Stylesheets meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 28th, at 11:00–12:30 PST | 14:00–15:30 EST | 19:00–20:30 UTC | 20:00–21:30 CET. Here you have the agenda: feel free to add any issues you would like to discuss https://docs.google.com/document/d/13_uGgScwVFkGRooQEiW4dkK-L3dlxXn98fYx9VY… Best, Helena

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