[MEI-L] Merging MEI Specs and Guidelines

[Johannes Kepper]

Dear all,

earlier this year, it has been decided that we want to merge the MEI Guidelines back into the MEI specification. That way, we can better ensure consistency. This means, however, that contributions to the Guidelines repo at https://github.com/music-encoding/guidelines are only possible before the transition, with some ample time to resolve remaining open issues. The transition is scheduled for November 9-14, but the deadline for any new pull requests against this repo is already on October 26. If you are currently preparing a pull request against this repo, please submit it no later than that date, or delay your contributions until after the transition, and into the new setup. Here is the schedule for the transition:

Friday, 2020-10-16, 12pm UTC: ODD Friday
We will discuss (and hopefully) resolve open issues and PRs we already have.

Monday, 2020-10-26: Deadline for new PRs / issues
Changes proposed after this date will not be considered for this repo anymore.

Thursday, 2020-10-29, 12pm UTC: ODD Thursday
All remaining issues will be addressed before the transition.

2020-11-12 – 2020-11-14: Transition of the Guidelines into the main repository
We have scheduled a developer workshop for this week, which will be held (primarily) online. During this workshop, we will implement the actual transition. We definitely welcome newcomers during this workshop (details will follow later). The online MEI Guidelines may be temporarily down for maintenance in that week.

Monday, 2020-11-16: Contributions welcome
If all goes well, we will be able to accept contributions again :)
We believe that this transition is in the interest of everyone using MEI, and try to minimize downtimes as much as possible. If you would like to learn more about the transition or would like to contribute, please get in touch.


Thanks to everyone who just joined our today's ODD Friday, where we discussed this schedule and the next steps that need to be done. 

All best,
jo