RE: xslt 2.0 The namespace axis. Help or waste of spac

> Seems to have come up as a topic recently.
> It seems to be a rarely used axis. Is this true for you?

Yes, it's rarely used, but in XPath 1.0 it's the only way to discover what
namespaces have been declared in your source document. This is essential if
the document uses "namespace prefixes in content".
> 
> If you use it, how?
> What makes it worthwhile in xslt 2.0?
> 

It's (sadly) deprecated in XPath 2.0 - largely at the instigation of
implementors who couldn't see how to implement it efficiently - and replaced
by custom functions such as in-scope-prefixes() and resolve-QName(). But
I've no intention of getting rid of it in Saxon.

Regards,

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