I hate to say this, but I didn't hear peals of joy surrounding xml:lang and
xml:space processing. Indeed, XML-Dev was pretty well covered in complaints
about inheritance of attributes and the fun it creates for both event-based
parsers and tools that extract subsections of documents (XPointers, for
instance.)
Just because it's already there doesn't mean it was a delightful idea in the
first place. Since James also wrote "You are wasting your time suggesting
alternative designs," I'll stick to implementation and documentation.
Simon St.Laurent
Dynamic HTML: A Primer / XML: A Primer / Cookies