>   I note that the recommendation specifies a notion which is untenable.
>  ...
>  I do take issue with claims that this set does not exist.
  
I suspect that the reason for not calling it a namespace is that you are
supposed to think of it as multiple sets which are not distinguished in
the syntax.

That is, if you have two documents that contain the element
{http://www.w3.org/1998/math/MathML}math then they are references to the
same element in the same set (the mathml namespace)

However if you have two documents referencing {}math then arguably they
are not intended to be the same element, It may be that they are in
different sets of elements but that the XML namespace syntax does not
distinguish that (maybe the application does using other info, eg the doctype).

In some contexts it makes sense to identify all {}math as being the math
element in a "" namespace (which is effectively what XPath does
although it avoids that terminology) (and I wouldn't have minded if
that's what the namespace spec had done) But I don't think the "no
namespace" statement is entirely bogus or contradicting the rest of the
namespace spec.

David

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