There are actually 3 ways of dealing with namespace

"Drop" and "ignore" mean the same thing. At the very least, the difference is ambiguous. Let's clarify:

• Standard support (verbose)
• Ignore namespace declarations (assume everything is in the null namespace)
• Ignore namespace declarations and make prefixes significant.

The last is XML::Twig's default. It also supports the first.

For XML::Twig, consistency is not as important as convenience

That's exactly the point I was making.

Prefixes are arbitrary strings that can and do change from document to document. The employment of a default namespace also can and does change from document to document.

It would very convenient if it could ignore namespaces, but it doesn't have a way of doing that. Instead of just ignoring namespaces, the default is to make make the prefix significant. Not only is that a step in the wrong direction, it makes it unusable in theory and in practice.

Being unable to use XML::Twig under common circumstances is not convenient at all.