[XML-SIG] Element.localName, Attr.localName

[Martina Oefelein]

At 13:36 Uhr -0400 08.08.2002, Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
>Martin v. Loewis writes:
> > > <doc xmlns:a="http://xml.python.org/a"
> > >      xmlns:A="http://xml.python.org/a"
> > >      xmlns:b="http://xml.python.org/b"
> > >      a:a="a" b:b="b"
> > >      />
> > >
> > > This is just XML 1.0, no namespaces!
> >
> > Why do you say that this document has no namespaces? It looks to me
> > like it has!
>
>Because I've said this is only an XML 1.0 document only; it happens to
>attributes that would be namespace declarations and prefixes if
>namespace processing were active, but it isn't.
>
> > It may be that an application is not *aware* of the namespaces, but
> > they surely are present.
>
>Er, no, there are no namespaces because this is only an XML 1.0
>document; the namespaces recommendation does not apply.

Even XML 1.0 reserves colons for namespaces. See this note in section 2.3:

Note: The colon character within XML names is reserved for experimentation with name spaces. Its meaning is expected to be standardized at some future point, at which point those documents using the colon for experimental purposes may need to be updated. (There is no guarantee that any name-space mechanism adopted for XML will in fact use the colon as a name-space delimiter.) In practice, this means that authors should not use the colon in XML names except as part of name-space experiments, but that XML processors should accept the colon as a name character.

ciao
Martina