> I feel that this proposal is sufficiently radical
One possibility that could be used today is to:
1. always use a prefix
2. use the same value for the prefix and namespace uri
That way, given the element name you also know the namespace.
Prefixes are already unique per domain anyway, and when XPath 3.0
comes along with the "ns":local syntax it will fit nicely.
Just doing that removes most of the complexity with namespaces, the
only problem is losing the globally unique aspect... but in practice
the prefix is already going to be unique in the subject area, and
that's all it has to do.
--
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
