Default namespace best practices?

[David Sewell]

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Michael Kay wrote:

> (b) if you don't define a default element namespace, then the elements in
> your result document will carry a namespace prefix. This probably means that
> when you generate XHTML, it won't be valid against the XHTML DTD, which
> requires that elements be unprefixed.

Is this a requirement, or is it implementation-dependent? Given the
query:

  declare namespace x = "someURI";
  <x:foo xmlns="someURI">
    <test>test</test>
  </x:foo>

Saxon 8.1B returns (omitting XML declaration)

  <x:foo xmlns="someURI" xmlns:x="someURI">
     <test>test</test>
  </x:foo>

whereas, for example, the Mark Logic XML server returns

  <foo xmlns="someURI">
    <test>test</test>
  </foo>

Is that kosher?

-- 
David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager
Electronic Imprint, The University of Virginia Press
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