RE: asthetics vs convention for namespace prefixs

Actually, in XSLT 2.0 you pretty-well *can* force the processor to use a
particular prefix. Namespace fixup is required to respect your choice of
prefix unless there is a conflict with another use of the same prefix. 

> 
> I know I can't rely on the prefix being used, but is it 
> frowned upon to try and encourage a specific namespace prefix?

There are use cases where you need to force a specific prefix not just for
aesthetic reasons:

(a) if you have namespace-sensitive data in text or attribute nodes

(b) if you are generating a vocabulary such as XHTML that uses a DTD, since
DTD's are not namespace-aware.

And I think that whenever you generate output whose markup will be seen by
humans, the choice of prefix is significant in that it will be easier for
them to read it if the prefix is mnemonic.

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