Re: Mechanism, not policy [was: Attribute uniqueness...]

> Yes, I do wish it were so, and I sincerely hope we will remove
> the typo from the namespace spec that says otherwise.

There is a difference (even if you work at the W3C) between
"things you don't like"
and
"typos" or "bugs" or other such phrases.

It is not a typo. it is built into the entire model of namespace
processing.

> Just change
> 	ns_name = elem.getattr('xmlns')
> to
> 	ns_name = urlparse.urljoin(baseURI, elem.getattr('xmlns'))
> in the implementations, and that's it.

that (in the cases where there is a base) implements the absolute
option. (and breaks any rational model for what an XML document is)

It does not make any resource whose identifier I use as a namespace
name into a namespace, and it does not make any namespace system
work on that basis.

To name a namespace you take a URI reference (or with the forbid
option a URI + fragment id) any URI will do, but if you want to choose
a unique name you pick the URI of a resource you control (or could
control).

The resource identified by the URI (if any exists) is of absolutely no
consequence to a namespace parser.

David