title: Suppressing namespace prefixes in ElementTree 1.2
body: <p>In python 2.7 (with etree 1.3), I can suppress the XML prefixes on elements like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Jun 16 2011, 16:59:05) 
  [GCC 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2335.15.00)] on darwin
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  &gt;&gt;&gt; import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.VERSION
  '1.3.0'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; something = etree.Element('{http://some.namespace}token')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.tostring(something)
  '&lt;ns0:token xmlns:ns0="http://some.namespace" /&gt;'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.register_namespace('', 'http://some.namespace')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.tostring(something)
  '&lt;token xmlns="http://some.namespace" /&gt;'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <code>register_namespace</code> function was added in 1.3. I'm trying to remove the prefix in a way that is compatible with python 2.6's etree at version 1.2.6. Here's what I've tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Python 2.6.7 (r267:88850, Jul 31 2011, 19:30:54) 
  [GCC 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2335.15.00)] on darwin
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  &gt;&gt;&gt; import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.VERSION
  '1.2.6'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; something = etree.Element('{http://some.namespace}token')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.tostring(something)
  '&lt;ns0:token xmlns:ns0="http://some.namespace" /&gt;'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree._namespace_map['http://some.namespace'] = ''
  &gt;&gt;&gt; etree.tostring(something)
  '&lt;:token xmlns:="http://some.namespace" /&gt;'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is not what I want. The prefixes are still there but are blank. Is there any way to remove them completely?</p>