But the hr element has a default namespace declaration on it, for the
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace. The scope of a namespace
declaration is the element that it's on and the contents of that
element, so the default namespace declaration in scope on the hr
element is the one for http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml, and thus the hr
element is in the namespace http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml.

Whether the XPath:

//html:hr

should retrieve it is, of course, another matter, since it entirely
depends on the namespace associated with the prefix 'html' in the
context in which the XPath is being used...

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+