There is one thing wrong with this proposal: it assumes that the
entire document can be sent to the client, and this will become less
true over time... there will always be a need to do searching on the
server side.
Personally, I think the whole # and ? thing needs to be rethought.
I would like to second this motion. We have syntax for specifying points and
regions for a couple of format that could be used to bound search. There is
also the issue of various searching schemes that one might want to accomodate.
The schemes should be extensible. (e.g., Z39.50's query type).
After you an a interesting amount of flexibility and power, the URL syntax
will get pretty cumbersome, and something analogous to forms will be
desirable.