The latest XML Namespaces W3C Rec. says:
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Namespace Constraint: Prefix Declared
The namespace prefix, unless it is xml or xmlns, must have been declared in a
namespace declaration attribute in either the start-tag of the element where
the prefix is used or in an an ancestor element (i.e. an element in whose
content the prefixed markup occurs). The prefix xml is by definition bound to
the namespace name http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace. The prefix xmlns is
used only for namespace bindings and is not itself bound to any namespace
name.
This constraint may lead to operational difficulties in the case where the
namespace declaration attribute is provided, not directly in the XML document
entity, but via a default attribute declared in an external entity. Such
declarations may not be read by software which is based on a non-validating
XML processor. Many XML applications, presumably including namespace-sensitive
ones, fail to require validating processors. For correct operation with such
applications, namespace declarations must be provided either directly or via
default attributes declared in the internal subset of the DTD.
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If I understand this correctly the default xmlns value is empty unless bound
explicitly to some URI in the XML document.
Radovan
P.S.:
I have one question. Is SAX 1.0 implementation offering some legal way of
getting the expanded namespace value for an element or attribute? Looking at
the stable Xerces-C 1.4.0 API docs I see only the SAXParser API which mentions
the data.
Bu as far as see it the SAX 1.0 handlers callbacks do not have it.
> But is there anything in the namespace spec that says that the URL for a
> namespace cannot be empty? I didn't see anything that said that, which is
> why I provided a real URL for the global namespace to map to. Personally I
> think that they should have provided one, since its not true that they
> aren't in any namespace. They are in the global namespace, which is a well
> defined namespace that's treated as a separate entity.
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