Historical question about namespaces

Read the subject line carefully. I'm not opposing namespaces and I don't
mean to start up a huge namespace debate again. :-)

One of the main drawbacks of DTDs is said to be their lack of namespace
support. When namespaces where still new, it was legitimate to put the
argument the other way, saying that namespaces doesn't have support for
DTDs. Namespaces has clearly won this match, but I still have a question:

I wonder why the gap between DTDs and namespaces was *allowed* by the WG?
In 1998, DTDs were really important and there were no other schema
languages in use. To people who followed this closely (I did too, but I
didn't understand much at the time), it must have seen as if W3C
contradicted itself. First a metalanguage with DTDs, then a very intrusive
and incompatible add-on...?

Did the WG envision a future with other schemas or was namespaces only
meant to be used with well-formed XML?

Gustaf