[eXist-TEIXML] Back from #TEIConf2014

[Joe W. <jo...@gm...>]

Hi all,

It was great to meet and see many of you again at the TEI Annual Meeting at
Northwestern the week before last.  For those who couldn't make it, the
conference Twitter hash tag has tons of great material.

Peter Stadler and I were chatting about this list, the community of TEI and
eXist users, and we thought this would be a good opportunity for everyone
to check in and say a few words about how you are doing.  What are you
working on these days?  How is it going?  Lessons?  Questions?

A few things occurred to me about the state of TEI and eXist:

First, this list was launched after the eXist seminars at TEI@Oxford 2010
and Digital Humanities@Oxford Summer School 2011.  It occurred to me that,
thanks to the incredible improvements have been made in eXist, a seminar
like those would be so much more effective today.  I spent easily the first
hour helping people with setting up eXist, connecting it to oXygen, and
installing the sample Punch application.  Now, between eXist's new default
"apps" directory, the powerful and free eXide app for writing apps in the
browser, and eXist's new Package Manager for installing new applications
and libraries, all of that setup and configuration could be skipped -
leaving much more time for instruction and exploration.  These same
improvements benefit not just first time learners, but the entire
community.  Today, it's so much faster to get up and running, developing
applications, and sharing them with others

Second, I kept hearing from folks online and at the conference that the
Punch application I used at the seminars was still useful.  On the plane
back from the conference and in the days since, I've worked on updating
Punch to use some more modern frameworks in eXist, and I've re-released the
app as a .xar file (EXPath Package) - easily installable via the
Dashboard.  Pull requests and suggestions are welcome.

Best regards to all,
Joe