RE: casting NOTATION to string

# I can see that there are problems with casting QNames due to 
# prefix bindings but NOTATION (and also ID, etc)  do not have 
# this problem as they are NCNames and don't have a prefix

This is true for NOTATION attributes defined in a DTD. But for some reason
which I find quite impossible to fathom, the Schema WG decided that
xs:NOTATION values defined in a schema should be QNames. Although the name
property of a NOTATION (like the name property of many other schema
components, such as element declarations and type definitions) is an NCName,
a NOTATION also has a target namespace property. Section 3.2.19 in XML
Schema Part 2 makes it clear that the value space of xs:NOTATION is the set
of QNames of notations declared in "the current schema" (whatever that might
be).

Michael Kay