[element based solution deleted]
Because it was felt undesirable that namespace processing should change
the structure of the element tree.
> If attribute-based namespace declaration is the only way to go, why not use
> a simple word like 'namespace' instead of 'xmlns' so that its purpose is
> clear to the reader?
Only names beginning with "xml" (any case) are reserved by the XML spec.
> If 'namespace' is too common, people can qualify it with 'xml' like this
> 'xml:namespace'?
Using 'xml:namespace' would mean that a namespace 'foo' was declared
using
xml:namespace:foo="..."
which looks very strange to me.
James