XHTML5 namespace... Is a final standard or need a W3C update?

Question

The HTML namespace is: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

So, a good practice is to add in the root tag of an XHTML5 file the attribute xmlns,

  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">...</html>

but, let's see http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml , it is updated?

NO: the last update was 2013-01-16 and about XHTML it say that is "Working drafts", so, perhaps, no final decision about ...

QUESTION: we can trust in this namespace declaration? Or we must wait a complete and safe standardization about it?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

For backward compatibility, the same http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace has been used for all versions of HTML since 2000, including XHTML 5.

W3C HTML5 28 October 2014 Recommendation (not draft, meaning the specification process is complete) says:

The HTML namespace is: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

The HTML namespace is: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

It is safe to trust the stability of the http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace name.

The presence of a stale "Working drafts" label at the documentation page listed at http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/ does not change the actual recommendation status of HTML5. You should also know that a namespace URI is a lexical naming construct which does not even have to be retrievable.

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