[OAI-implementers] Branding

[Young,Jeff]

I have an immediate need for a best-practices description for creating XSLT
stylesheets for use with the description/branding/metadataRendering element
in an OAI Identify response
(http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/guidelines-branding.htm). 

The only guidance this specification gives regarding the stylesheet itself
is "the style sheet must be able to render the metadata part of a GetRecord
response for the specific metadata format". Unfortunately, it doesn't say
what the stylesheet should render it into. Should it be an HTML fragment
suitable for dropping into the body of an HTML document? Should it be a
stand-alone XHTML document ready to display in a browser? Can I depend on
the result being assigned to a particular namespace? There are limits to how
many variants I should have to attempt in order to parse the result and use
it.
 
There are only 4 repositories registered at UIUC that currently use this the
metadataRendering element, two of which are mine
(http://gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/ListReposWithDesc.asp?desc=branding)
. I am on the verge, however, of creating a system that depends on them, as
well as updating many of my repositories to include them.

It would be nice to have this group's consensus before I commit to a
particular solution.

Jeff