The adage goes: “XML is like violence: if it doesn’t solve your problem, you aren’t using enough of it.” “Parand Darugar”:http://www.parand.com/say/index.php/2005/07/21/abolish-xml-namespaces/ has challenged that idea (or validated the sarcasm) with a compelling case for “abolishing XML namespaces”:http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-abolns.html.

I never did warm to namespaces, personally. The idea looks good on paper: provide infinitely-extensible support for any number of document formats within a single document. In practice, supporting namespaces always seemed to require ten times more work than the problems they purport to solve, so I’ve avoided inflicting them on others. Now I’ll treat that as a rule, and encourage others to do so as well.