namespace-unawareness

Oh List, here's a question:

Do standard XML tools provide a mechanism for handling XML documents 
containing tags with prefixed names but no corresponding namespace 
declaration?  For example, if I'm given a document containing something 
like:

<related-article xlink:href="xxx" />

and the xlink prefix is never declared, should a parser (for example) be 
able to parse this document if it's set up with namespace-aware=false?  
And various followup questions (if so: what is the name of the 
attribute? if not: what is the point of namespace-aware=false)?

-- 
Michael Sokolov
Engineering Director
www.ifactory.com
@iFactoryBoston

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