I guess that's what XML namespaces were supposed to allow. Reality seemed to involve eldritch abominations like one system I encountered that had entire Base64

I guess that's what XML namespaces were supposed to allow. Reality seemed to involve eldritch abominations like one system I encountered that had entire Base64 encoded XML documents embedded as attribute values in a higher level document and then this approach applied recursively.... Edit: Of course, this wasn't XMLs fault - but for some reason a lot of XML used in the "enterprise" world seemed to be primarily designed to eat the soul of whoever gazed upon it.