What is Namespace in XML

[Elieis]

Hi,
I am having problem in my characters in XML. It is not displaying the characters properly. Some text are shown up in the form of symbols. I had tried to set the font settings but still it is not showing correct fonts. And second thing I need details about namespace in XML. What is it and for what purpose it can be implemented. The characters issue is serious here. Thanks in advance.

[Praetor]

Namespaces allow XML to be a metalanguage, distinguishing between these XML vocabularies. An XML namespace has the same role as its counterpart in Java or C + +, one to avoid name collisions. Each vocabulary XML has a namespace URI identified by a unique instance of the XSLT is identified by the URI. The namespace is implemented by placing a prefix before each element and attribute, the prefix is associated with the URI of the namespace.

[Katty]

Before you can use a namespace prefix and its partner must be declared as an attribute generally placed in the root element, and prefixed with the special prefix xmlns. The attribute xmlns: xsl tells the XML parser that all elements and attributes prefixed with xsl and are son of <xsl:stylesheet>. If you create your own XML vocabulary, it is strongly advised to assign a URI that defines its namespace, and to attach a prefix that you use in your documents.

[kelfro]

It is likely that the value of the encoding attribute in the XML prolog of your document, which is intended to tell the XML parser what encoding is used there does not match the actual encoding, one that was used to create the document. This often occurs, for documents containing text in a language, by a display problem with accented characters when displayed in an XML editor, or by errors during parsing of the document. It is also important to note that when in the case where the encoding attribute is not populated, the XML parser considers default document encoding is UTF-8. It is highly recommended to always specify which encoding is used.