[MKSearch-dev] Fwd: [philb@ICBL.HW.AC.UK: OpenSearch]

[Phil Shaw]

On 18 Mar 2005, at 12:37, Chris Croome wrote:

> This looks interesting:
> 
>   "OpenSearch is not a search engine -- it is a way for search
>   engines to publish their search results in a standard and accessible
>   format."
> 
>   http://opensearch.a9.com/

Chris,

Yes, it's a good idea, it is odd they chose RSS 2.0 as their platform 
markup. It has the client support, which makes it easy to adopt, but 
its not as interoperable and extensible as RDF would make it.

It is definitely worth having the results format independent of the 
presentation layer. This is what I have done with the MKSearch 
ResultsRenderer interface; take your results, add an 
XhtmlResultsRenderer and presto! Add an RssResultsRenderer and you 
have a feed... I think an RDF renderer would be the best option to 
share MKSearch results like OpenSearch.

> Though their RSS standard is rather odd (it would have been a lot
> nicer if they had based it on RSS 1.0):
> 
>   "OpenSearch RSS 1.0 is an extension to the RSS 2.0 standard"

That's just plain confusing, have they never heard of RSS 1.0?

Best regards,

Phil