Agenda for February 5, 2015 ALTO board teleconference.

  1. Review action items [Frederick leads discussion]
  2. Continue discussion of Glyphs change request (issue 26). (See item 10 in minutes from London face-to-face meeting) [Joachim leads discussion.]
  3. Continue discussion of Shape change request (issue 22). (See item 10 in minutes from London face-to-face meeting) [Evelien leads discussion.]
  4. Review organization and use of Github. See items 1 to 9 in minutes from London face-to-face meeting). [Frederick leads discussion]
  5. Reminder to send URLs to digital collections which use ALTO XML to Nate so that he can update the use case examples at ALTO Implementers [Frederick harangues everyone]

View all open action items here.

Attending members

Minutes

Action items now tied to milestones as per Jukka's suggestions. Each board meeting is a milestone and action times from that board meeting are associated with that milestone.

Joachim was not in the meeting so discussion of Glyphs change request discussion is postponed.

Evelien comments that documentation can be made in 2 ways on Github: (1) Using a wiki which Github provides, and (2) creating HTML files to include at http://altoxml.gihub.io. The wiki is viewable by all team members as well as by the general public. Question arose if images, such as Evelien would need to document the shape change use cases, can be embedded using the markdown language. Nate finds that it is possible according to the markdown help pages. Attending members agree that using a wiki instead of or in addition to HTML at http://altoxml.github.io. Evelien and Frederick volunteer to find out if there is an easy way to transform from HTML to markdown and vice-versa; Nate discovers that this is possible.

Evelien and Frederick volunteer to experiment with the Github wiki, and, if possible, to transfer select documents from PBWorks to the Github wiki. [AI]

Frederick remarks that Github allows an issue to be owned by only 1 person. The work-around is to create a tag "EWVERYONE" and mark issues for everyone with it as needs be.

Five people have responded to the face-to-face meeting survey. Jukka remarks that iPres should be included in the list of conferences. Frederick will update the face-to-face meeting survey to include iPres and re-send it to everyone.

Jukka remarks that the date on action items is not necesary. Frederick responds that the date corresponds to the meeting from which the action item arose.

Evelien comments that it is best to wait for more information about text direction from Siang Hock. Frederick comments that this issue is related to rotation, for example, text from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, right-to-left, etc. What does rotation mean? Is it the rotation of the text block itself or the rotation of the text within the text block.

Brian asks Evelien about structify). Frederick asks if there is overlap between ALTO tags and what structify is trying to do. Evelien replies that there is overlap but that structify records this information in METS. Frederick will be in touch with Guenter Muehlberger to ask about collaboration between ALTO and structify. [AI] Brian says that structify should be a tool for the ALTO tools page.

Nate comments that Europeana newspapers developed a named entity recognition tool for tagging names in Europeana newspapers. Clemens Neudecker developed this tool whilst he was at the KB (he is now at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Brian will develop a prototype tools page before the next meeting.

Brian asks that a note be added to the meeting invites asking board members who know they can't attend to notify the board that they won't be there. Nate says that the Library of Congress doesn't allow Skype.