Yes, but the person writing the stylesheet knows what namespace his
rule elements are in, right? So in effect, you're still specifying a
match based on the underlying URI, not the prefix? I have a feeling
you wouldn't have posted that if the answers weren't "wrong, and no".
So could you give a motivating example. I find it really hard to be
comfortable with any scenario in which the prefix, not the associated
URI, has any real effect... it seems so clearly just a placeholder.
I'd go so far as to say that scenarios in which the prefixes become
interesting are prima facie evidence of weakness in the namespace
facility. I mean, in C, are the semantics of strlen() and strcpy()
ever affected by the name of the char * variable they're applied to?
-T.