Re: [xml-dev] giving xml a colonic: re-opening (or re-opining on)an old

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

On 10/09/2011 04:17, Amelia A Lewis wrote:
> However, a variant of XPath is perfectly
> feasible, in which the expressions are enhanced with the inclusion of
> namespaces, using the JC expanded-name form.
XPath 3.0 does so. It uses the syntax

"namespace-uri":local-name

rather than Clark notation to avoid conflict with another proposed use 
of curly braces in XQuery.

I hope this form will become accepted in other contexts. I'd like to see 
it allowed anywhere a QName is allowed, including element and attribute 
names in XML. (It wouldn't be legal XML 1.0, but it could easily be 
preprocessed into legal XML 1.0 for the benefit of parsers that don't 
recognize it.) And then perhaps people will be encouraged to go for 
short namespace names, like "w3c.xslt", that remove the need for 
prefixes without significantly increasing the risk of name clashes.

Michael Kay
Saxonica