I'm afraid it doesn't seem to be SRU if you return HTML.  When you return a stylesheet, you still return XML and have the browser render the XML to HTML.

I'm afraid that you're closer to OpenSearch than you are to SRU, but OpenSearch doesn't define a standard query grammar.

Rob Sanderson has had discussions with the OpenSearch folks about support for CQL.  He might have a suggestion for you.

Ralph

> -----Original Message-----
> From: SRU (Search and Retrieve Via URL) Implementors [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Tony Hammond
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 10:12 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: SRU Question re XML Processing
> 
> (This is a copy of a private mail I sent to Ray D. over a couple months
> ago
> and to which he graciously replied, but also suggested that I send to the
> list to get a wider perspective. Apologies for not mailing sooner but got
> sucked up into some other projects, though ready to refocus on this now.
> Appreciate any guidance. And very much hoping the answer is "Yes!" :)
> 
> Hi:
> 
> Got a question that you may be able to help us out with. We (NPG) are
> looking to make available some HTML snippets that folks can cut and paste
> onto their own websites which would provide a search textbox on their
> pages
> to run against our own search indexes and return (in first instance) our
> standard HTML result pages. I have been thinking that we shouldn¹t really
> be
> using our ASP search syntax (because proprietary, obscure, account in
> plaintext, etc.) but rather a Œstandard¹ search syntax.
> 
> Naturally SRU springs to mind (as does OpenSearch).  Mapping (either) URI
> querystring is trivial. Question I have is more particular. SRU returns
> XML
> to the user (with possibly a stylesheet reference attached). Is it
> acceptable (in the SRU scheme of things) to allow for the possibility of
> an
> intermediary (in this case, our own server) to render the XML and deliver
> HTML back to the user. Does that break the spirit of SRU? I could imagine
> that initially (since we anyway deliver HTML) that one could have a Œfaux¹
> stylesheet reference which could be applied to the result set and serve up
> HTML to the user. We do also have the ability to acquire raw XML back from
> the ASP, and so could also provide alternate Œsnippets¹ which would allow
> for querying with SRU and getting native SRU XML docs back, or with (real)
> stylesheets to get other renderings, e.g. (X)HTML includes, RSS, etc.
> 
> Does this make sense in the SRU context, to allow for the possibility that
> a
> server could intermediate the SRU return on the basis of a stylesheet
> reference included in the XML document (whether real or faux). And with a
> stylesheet reference we could just return native SRU XML? I don¹t want to
> run against the spirit of SRU. (And still need to catch up with latest
> version of OpenSearch.)
> 
> Thanks for any comments you may have time for.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tony
> 
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