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> When people complain about namespaces, do they mean that namespaces should
> not exist at all? Do they think they are useless? Or do they think they
> should be replaced by something else? Or do they have in mind some simple
> changes to the syntax, such as using URI/localname pairs everywhere?
>
> Alessandro
Namespaces in some form definitely need to exist, and I rarely see reason to believe to the contrary. They certainly are not useless, as they facilitate componentized schemas. At this point, I question replacing them, since so much existing infrastructure is built on them.
The problem is that when a customer writes "a:b", every app/api/xml-spec has a slightly different set of rules for how to resolve that name that matches. (writing "b" is even worse...). Few, if any of these match the naïve notion that it should match XML tag-names written "a:b". An experienced developer gets used to the fact that the mental model for how to resolve prefixed names is different for XML element names, attribute names, DOM level-1 method calls, DOM XPath queries, XSLT, and XSD... but that takes a while and that level of complexity has caused many problems. We can't expect every developer to be a XML expert, but that is what is necessary to write a robust XML app using today's standards.
-derek
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