I saw a pointer today about a thing advocated by Amazon.com called
OpenSearch:
Many sites today return search results as a tightly integrated
part of the website itself. Unfortunately, those search results
can't be easily reused or made available elsewhere, as they are
usually wrapped in HTML and don't follow any one convention.
OpenSearch offers an alternative: an open format that will enable
those search results to be displayed anywhere, anytime. Rather
than introduce yet another proprietary or closed protocol,
OpenSearch is a straightforward and backward-compatible extension
of RSS 2.0, the widely adopted XML-based format for content
syndication.
http://opensearch.a9.com/
'Sounds alike the results of SRW/U queries, only with a different
syntax. Example XML output is here, and is based on RSS:
http://opensearch.a9.com/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/
--
Eric Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
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