On 11/8/11, Barry Warsaw
... one problem with abbreviations is that they are more difficult for non-native English speakers to understand and use.
qname seems to be well established for XML. Do you fear that the q doesn't look enough like a prefix, and they won't recognize it as a type of name, or only that they won't know what makes this type of name special?
Python has always valued readability over writing convenience, and I think this is one of Guido's founding brilliant insights: code is read far more often then it is written. And yet, he managed to find elegant ways of expressing code clearly without being overly verbose.
Frankly, I wouldn't know precisely what a "qualified name" is, and I can only guess based on my painful experience with other systems -- of which XML is by far the least ugly. I'm not sure a standard abbreviation makes things any worse. ("Fully Qualified Name" isn't as bad, but clearly runs afoul of succinctness.) -jJ