[lxml-dev] Problem with ":" char in tag names

[Stefan Behnel]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Dave Kuhlman wrote:
>> I've been using lxml and think it is great, but ...
>>
>> I recently installed lxml-1.3.3.  Now I find that the following
>> gives me an error:
>>
>>     In [3]: from lxml import etree
>>     In [4]: etree.Element('abc:def')
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>>       File "<ipython console>", line 1, in <module>
>>       File "etree.pyx", line 1801, in etree.Element
>>       File "apihelpers.pxi", line 101, in etree._makeElement
>>       File "apihelpers.pxi", line 723, in etree._getNsTag
>>     ValueError: Invalid tag name
>>
>> It's because of the ":" in the tag name.
> 
> As another data point: by coincidence yesterday I saw a discussion of 
> some other project who also ran into this problem.
> 
> http://groups.google.com/group/html5lib-discuss/browse_thread/thread/9997a2468ab2b362
> 
> No idea about the context there.

Hmmm, I really wonder how many people used this 'feature' to work around
having to implement proper namespace support...

Stefan