Re: [xml-dev] Global or shared namespace?

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

> Ronald Bourret wrote:
> 
>> I don't see what harm this would do. In practice, it is what happens
>> anyway. For example, if an element/attribute name is not in a namespace,
>> DOM level 2 uses a null for the URI and SAX 2 uses an empty string.


I'm in part responsible for the empty string.  The semantic is the
same - there's no namespace name.  I argued for the empty string in
SAX2 because in java it's convenient to write

  if (elObject.getNamespace().equals("http://my.namespace.com/";))

and this always works if "no namespace" is signaled by an
empty string.  It's also coherent since the NS rec explicitly
rules out the empty string ever being used as a namespace name.
  -Tim