search could provide OpenSearch metadata. Various software supports OpenSearch (see the Wikipedia article on OpenSearch); in particular, browsers like Firefox and Iceweasel will automatically discover an OpenSearch search and offer it in the search box.
More specifically, we want to follow the OpenSearch Description Document
standard,
by having a link with rel="search" and
type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" in the headers of HTML, RSS,
and Atom pages. The href of that link should point to an
OpenSearchDescription XML file with contents generated based on the
information in ikiwiki.setup, and the title attribute of the link should
contain the wiki title from ikiwiki.setup.
I support adding this. I think all that is needed, beyond the simple task of adding the link header, is to make the search plugin write out the xml file, probably based on a template.
One problem is that the specification for the XML file contains a number of silly limits to field lenghs. For example, it wants a "ShortName" that identifies the search engine, to be 16 characters or less. The Description is limited to 1024, the LongName to 48. This limits what existing config settings can be reused for those.
Another semi-problem is that the specification saz:
OpenSearch description documents should include at least one Query element of role="example" that is expected to return search results. Search clients may use this example query to validate that the search engine is working properly.
How should ikiwiki know what example query will return actual results? (How would a client know if a HTML page contains results or not, anyway?) Sillyness. Ignore this? --Joey