Technology Commitments for DHQ

Values and goals

• longevity of information access
• freedom and breadth of access
• experimentation and diversification
• open communications channels

Front end

• HTML (version?), Javascript/ECMAScript (version? platforms?), CSS
• Browser compatibility (please add): Internet Explorer 6+, Netscape 8+, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, ...
• Conformance to accessibility guidelines (which?)
• RSS
• low-end, degradable front page (for broad accessibility)
• graphics and binary multimedia formats: JPEG, PNG, SVG, MPEG (which? others?)
• over time, alternative/experimental channels (PDF, OEB)

Middle tier

• Processing model assumes XML 1.0/1.1, XSLT 1.0 (document processing should be portable across platforms and toolkits)
• RelaxNG and Schematron (both ISO standard) plus XSLT (W3C? ) for extra-process validation
• Transformation engine / web server: open source, freely-available platform with maximum achievable portability

Lower tier

• Portability ensured by working with OSS file system architectures and databases (Java running on UNIX/Linux/MacOSX)

-- WendellPiez - 10 Aug 2005