OSS Watch documents are principally written in an XML notation called the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). These XML documents are stored on computers running Debian GNU/Linux. Public access to the documents is through the OSS Watch website which employs an Apache web server. The XML documents are transformed dynamically when they are accessed. The Apache web server is configured to use Apache AxKit to do the transformation, and AxKit is configured to use some XSLT stylesheets to do these transformations. Depending on the XSLT stylesheet used, an XML document will render either as HTML, HTML (for text only), HTML (for simple printing) or PDF (for more sophisticated printing).
Occasionally some OSS Watch documents are written using OpenOffice or Apache Forrest.
All of the software involved in these processes are examples of open source software.
All OSS Watch documents on the website undergo a life cycle that is designed to ensure quality and consistency. Each document is reviewed 6 months after publication for integrity and again 12 months after publication for integrity and relevance. Any document found lacking in either area at the 12 month review is either rewritten as required or archived. Archived documents remain on the public website in order to ensure that no one's links to such documents break. They are clearly marked as Archived. Such documents will not be further checked for link integrity and relevance. There is a document that contains a full list of archived documents.
The OSS Watch website, www.oss-watch.ac.uk, is designed to render as valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. OSS Watch works to ensure that the structure and content of documents is separated from presentational aspects, and to this end seeks to ensure that only valid CSS2 is used in the rendering of our HTML pages. Together, with valid HTML and CSS, the OSS Watch website should render well in most standards compliant browsers. Do please let us know if you detect a difficulty rendering our pages in your browser by writing to us at info@oss-watch.ac.uk.
A text only version of a document is accessible through the Text only link at the top left of each page. This will render the page with a black background and high contrast large font yellow text. Hyperlinks show up as bright blue. This is the same XML document as seen previously, but this time transformed with a different XSLT stylesheet. The colours and text have been chosen to match an accessibility style developed by the BBC called Betsie (BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer).
The simple printing version of a document is accessible through the simple link at the top right of each page. This presents the document using a simplified HTML format for easy printing.
OSS Watch presentations at workshops and conferences are sometimes written in XML and transformed to PDF for viewing. On other occasions they are written using OpenOffice Presentation and saved as either OpenOffice documents, or in Microsoft PowerPoint format, or in PDF. Sometimes they are written using Apache Forrest.
It is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales licence.
OSS Watch is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee.