Making XML Namespaces Simpler

As I've been playing with XML a bit more lately due to the SVG work I've been doing, I've been amazed yet again that XML namespaces are so complex. Why didn't they just standardize on prefixes like 'svg:' instead of long URLs? I stumbled on a great editorial on how the XML web could be refactored to allow this; its probably too late, but the ideas in here are good:

XML Namespaces Don't Need URIs

"The decision to identify XML namespaces with URIs was an architectural mistake that has caused much suffering for XML users and needless complexity for XML tools. Removing namespace URIs altogether and simply using namespace prefixes to identify namespaces would make it easier for people as well as software to read, write, and process XML."

Comments

aashish said…
If you are struggling with xml namespaces, there is a great tutorial on xpath namespaces at xml reports. It walks you through it in very simple steps

xml reports