OATS website
General Specification
The website is the main deliverable of the OATsoft project. The website will deliver a friendly and simple front end to a database of Assistive Technology (AT) Open Source Software (OSS) and a CVS store for new development.
General Objectives:
- Three click click-through to download appropriate software
- Clearly convey project and objectives to all users
- Build community of AT users, developers and professionals
- Become THE place to look for AT OS software
- Promote use of FLOSS within AT community
- W3C compliant and readability guideline compliant
Issues
- Will we restrict ourselves to OS software, or include free software? What about non-free and commercial software, do we discuss this as well?
We should predominantley focus on FreeAndOpenSource? Software, but include the wider community of free software. Two reasons for this - firstly, it is most useful to the end user (do they really care what the license is?) - secondly it might encourage some people to make their stuff FLOSS. This is achieved by having a 'license' field in the DB - so searches can be restricted to different licenses or displayed accordingly.
Users
The website is designed to be used by a number of distinct user groups, as defined below.
1. (Prospective) AT user
- 1.1. The website will offer this user a simple and easy GUI to search for, install and use appropriate AT software.
- 1.2. The website will also offer the opportunity to communicate comments and feature requests about AT OSS to other end users and to software developers.
- 1.3. Further extensions to the site may offer other general AT software advice
2. (Prospective) AT OSS developer
- 2.1. The website will offer this user a range of software projects that require development .
- 2.2. The website will also offer the opportunity to communicate with end users and to other software developers.
- 2.3. The site will advocate for the use of OSS for AT.
3. AT professional 3.1. The website will allow the AT professional to contribute resources and project specs.
4. All users 4.1. All users will be able to contribute suggested additions to the database of AT OSS 4.2. All users will be able to browse the full content
Development plan
See the TracTickets for the development requirements... in general (this is my (simons) interpretation):
- Andy: Sorting out server-side issues
- Jason: Sorting out DB side issues and linking to PLONE, Also installers
- Simon: Sorting out website structure and some templating.
- Everyone: contribute to structure, content where appropriate
- Sort out server to allow sandboxing (tick)
- Develop suggested structure of site and identify exact requirements (in progress, simon) Start adding content from this point!
- Develop DB links to PLONE templates (in progress, Jason)
- Construct PLONE templates, CSS etc (simon, jason: with all round input)
- ........
We should refer to the project plan for specifics though.
