[xml] handling namespaces

[Eric Levy <contact ericlevy name>]

Hello,

I am struggling to understand how libxml2 is meant to handle namespaces. 
 Most recently, I created an in-memory document using the public API 
that causes libxslt to hang on xlstCopyNamespaceList() when I call 
xsltApplyStylesheet().
I am developing a small application that has a feature similar to 
XInclude.  An element in one document causes the inclusion of a subtree 
of another document.  I use the xmlCopyNode() routine to obtain a 
subtree suitable for being inserted into another document, and I had 
hoped that the library layer handles namespaces transparently, but it 
seems not so.  I should say that I also tried xmlDocCopyNode(), but I 
saw no difference in behavior.  I observe that the ns field of xmlNode 
is  only populated if the node has a namespace declaration in the 
original document.  Further, the resulting document I created is 
corrupt, as evidenced from the observation that when it is used as a 
stylesheet in a transformation, the transformation method never returns, 
but rather goes into xsltCopyNamespaceList() indefinitely.
Perhaps someone can address the following issues:

1) In some xmlDoc, how do I determine the namespace of a particular 
xmlNode, following XML rules for inheritance?
2) How do I copy xmlNode instances across documents so as to correct for 
namespaces?
3) Is the behavior I described a bug in the library, or my misuse of it?

Sincerely,
Eric Levy