So the namespace declaration is not needed in content.xml
Well I don't understand your problem at all then.
I thought the idea was to run your generated XSLT over this file.
If so, it'll need to be namespace well formed. If not, what's it got to
do with your problem at hand?
I got the impression what he wants to do is to generate an open office
file and to put his own namespaced elements in there, i.e that the
namespaces he was worried about where not namespaces found inside open
office's xml format, hence the ns1:foo | ns2:foo and so forth example.
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list