| 3. The "Declare Namespace" dialog box | ||
|---|---|---|
 | Chapter 9. Dialog boxes |  |
| 3. The "Declare Namespace" dialog box | ||
|---|---|---|
| | Chapter 9. Dialog boxes | |
This dialog box can be used
To declare a namespace used by the name of an attribute or an element (it is required to do so before adding the element or the attribute) or used in the value of the attribute or in the textual content of the element (for example, when the document being edited is a schema).
In practice, this is very rarely needed because document templates generally contain declarations for all the namespaces they might use.
To change the prefix of a namespace.
What is called a prefix here should be called the nickname or the mnemonic of the namespace. Without nickname "xsi" for namespace "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance", an attribute name such as "xsi:schemaLocation" would be displayed as "{http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance}schemaLocation" by the GUI of XXE, which is quite unreadable.
Real namespace prefixes only exist while the document is being loaded and while the document is being saved. Do not try to add an xmln attribute to elements to specify an namespace and its prefix. XXE does this automatically each time the document is saved, the nicknames declared using this dialog box being used preferably over automatically generated prefixes such as ns, ns2, ns3, etc.
To make a namespace the default namespace, that is, the namespace for which no prefix is displayed (for element names, not for attribute names).
It is not recommended to mark a namespace as being “default” if some elements in the document have names without a namespace. In such case, it would be impossible to tell if name "title" is "title" with no namespace or is in fact "{http://www.foo.com/namespace}title", where "http://www.foo.com/namespace" has been marked as being the default namespace.
However, when the current document is conforming to a DTD, this dialog box can only be used to view the namespaces and their prefixes and not to edit them.
![[Note]](images/note.svg) | |
This dialog box may display more namespaces than expected. These extra namespaces generally come from the template in XMLmind XML Editor - Configuration and Deployment used to create the document and/or the schema to which the document is conforming. However, when saving the document being edited, these namespaces are not necessarily all written to the save file. |
You may have to clear the form by clicking on the 
button
Specify the URI of the namespace in the Namespace field.
Specify the prefix of the namespace in the Prefix field.
Specifying a prefix is mandatory even if the namespace is to be marked as “default”.
Optionally mark it as being the default namespace by checking the Default toggle.
Type Enter in any field or click on the 
button.
Select the namespace declaration to be edited by clicking on its row in the table.
Specify the prefix' of the namespace in the Prefix field.
Specifying a prefix is mandatory even if the namespace is to be marked as “default”.
Optionally mark it as being the default namespace by checking the Default toggle.
Type Enter in any field or click on the button.
| |  | |
| 2. The "Find and Replace Element" dialog box |  | 4. The "Attribute Value" dialog box |
