"we're so used to people not getting namespaces right that we hardly even notice any more"
Some simple examples would be much appreciated, for my education.
Examples of what people get wrong about namespaces? Oh murder, where to begin?!
Thinking unprefix articles share their parents' namespaces
Thinking namespaces can be used for operational identification (i.e. under rules of RFC 2396 or RFC 3986)
Thinking the XML Base URI (i.e. from Infoset) has anything to do with namespace
Thinking that elements in namespaces are easily moved around in document syntax (this one is pretty false unless the user has gone with "sane" or "normal" namespaces rules according to the Joe English definition. It is utterly, desperately, egregiously false if QNames are used in content)
Thinking you can switch to Jams Clark notation early in processing to escape some of the weirder bits of namespaces (again QNames in content defeats this idea)
Thinking in processing tools such as XSLT that you can safely use the unprefixed form to designate an element in default namespace
back when I still harbored some hope that people could be taught to use namespaces without at least the most pernicious faults. I've long given up home on that idea.
