RE: NCName, QName and colons

> I was under the impression that XSLT could only process XML 
> conforming to the Namespaces in XML Recommendation, but I 
> can't find anything in the XSLT 1.0 specification that 
> strictly prohibits the input to have to be classic (i.e., 
> non-namespace) XML. It requires a source tree, but how the 
> source tree is build from an actual source and what its 
> specifications are, if any, I can't find it.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/#data-model

"XML documents operated on by XPath must conform to the XML Namespaces
Recommendation [XML Names]."

> 
> PS: it seems that at the time of XSLT 1.0, an effort was 
> started to create an XML Query Data Model 
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-query-datamodel-20010215/#elemNo
> de). This, too, only allowed QNames. However, it never made 
> it to a Recommendation and work was not in sync with work on 
> the XSLT 1.0 specification (unverified).

This was an early draft of what eventually became the XDM model used by
XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0, and XSLT 2.0. Might not be recognizable from the
content, but you can trace the ancestry if you're determined!

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay