Re: reparing XML Namespaces without breaking existing content

/ Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com> was heard to say:
| There has recently been extended discussion of namespaces within the
| HTML WG and other WGs and I'd like to suggest these are some issues

I think it would be possible to describe a technical middle-ground for
XML 2.0 and HTML to share a common model for distributed extensibility
and namespaces. The technical details are tricky, but pale in
comparison to the social/political details.

It would require two large, robust communities to agree that a
compromise on core issues is preferable to simply forking the world of
angle-bracket markup languages.

Personally, I think the world would be vastly better if we could
arrange for such a compromise to take place, but I don't currently see
how to get there. 

That said, I have concerns about your specific suggestions.

The central feature of your points seems to be the idea that
unqualified attributes on an element should be treated as though they
were qualified with the same namespace as their parent.

What problem does that solve?

That's neither backwards nor forwards compatible and seems at odds
with:

  <x:foo bar="1" x:bar="2"/>

which is, though perhaps odd, entirely valid.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | The years teach us much which the days
http://nwalsh.com/            | never knew.-- Emerson