There's some kind of law about natural language that says short words are
used more often than long words. Language has evolved that way because it
improves communication. When you have a concept that is very frequently
referenced, it's best to use a short name for it, because this reduces the
time taken by the reader to recognize it. So for a namespace like xsl or xs
which is used hundreds of times in a stylesheet, a short prefix works well.
It's likely that the saxon namespace will be used less often, so a slightly
longer name is appropriate.

I think a short prefix also helps the reader to focus their attention on the
local part of the name, which is the part that carries more information.

There's a school of thought, of course, which tries to ban short names like
"i" and "j" from programming entirely. This is of course a stupid
over-reaction to programs that over-use such names. The fact of the matter
is that bad programmers will produce unreadable code whatever disciplines
you impose on them.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Stubsjoen [mailto:kstubs@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 07 June 2007 18:58
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  Long Namespaces
> 
> Is there any creed that suggests that namespace decelerations 
> are either bad or shunned upon?  It seems that 3 letter 
> namespaces are the norm.  Is anyone using verbose namespace 
> declarations regularly?
> 
> Karl..