Not-So-Pretty Staged Plan

#1  Put out a notice officially recognizing the
    namespace inconsistencies amoung the spec
    and the various implementations.  Enumerating
    each and every issue.    Examples include
    (a) uri reference absolute/relative inconsistencies
    (b) per-element-partition inconsistency
    (c) any others?

#2  Specify "conservative" interpretations of
    each of the issues; ie, a core position which  
    can be counted on to work in the future. Ex: 
    (a) only use absolute URIs in namespaces,
        processes use character-by-character comparision.
    (b) Do not rely on a per-element distinction
        for un-prefixed attributes.
 
#3  Form an emergency committee to re-write the
    XML Namespace spec; rolling in the xml:base
    specification.  Re-issue an updated namespec
    specification and patches to XPath/etc. as
    needed.  Don't worry about breaking previous
    documents or code... just get it right.

#4  Release the above changes with XML 1.1 ... with
    <?xml version="1.1" ?>

Oh fun.

Clark