RE: [xml-dev] ten years later, time to repeat it?

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> Aren't the URIs effectively just strings as far as namespaces 
> are concerned? 
> Would it really solve any problems to use some other from of 
> unique string?

I think it would have saved the community $zillions if namespace names were
restricted to valid name characters, and if there were a permitted
representation of element names that used the full namespace name rather
than an alias. Rather like Java, where you have the choice of saying
ContentHandler or org.xml.sax.ContentHandler. There would then be a
normalized form of the document in which all the names were expanded, with
no prefixes, and no namespace declarations, and that form would be VASTLY
easier for applications to process.

In the lexical representation you could then avoid prefixes entirely and
only allow a single default namespace.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/