RFC initiated for Simple Spectral Access protocol

[Roy Williams]

> I'm afraid that I am with Randy on this.  Yes, VOTable is very 
> convenient for some things, but the danger is that if we emphasise it 
> too much for spectra, service providers may think that they don't have 
> to support anything else. 

What a coincidence to see this thread first thing this morning, since I 
have planned part of my day for translating the spectrum service from 
JHU into a proper cone search -- i.e. one that returns VOTable. And I am 
told by the developers (budavari and Dobos) that their XML format will 
change *again* in the near future, so that I will have to re-create this 
filter quite soon. What would be really nice is a spectral cone search 
-- RA and DEC and SR is converted to VOTable of sources and links to 
their spectra.

Roy