[XML-SIG] Empty string namespace - to bug or not to bug?

[Alexis Marrero]

Is this a bug? Is there any work around?

doc = minidom.parseString('<root xmlns="">value</root>')
doc.toxml()

Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
   File  
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site- 
packages/_xmlplus/dom/minidom.py", line 47, in toxml
     return self.toprettyxml("", "", encoding)
   File  
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site- 
packages/_xmlplus/dom/minidom.py", line 59, in toprettyxml
     self.writexml(writer, "", indent, newl, encoding)
   File  
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site- 
packages/_xmlplus/dom/minidom.py", line 1739, in writexml
     node.writexml(writer, indent, addindent, newl)
   File  
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site- 
packages/_xmlplus/dom/minidom.py", line 816, in writexml
     _write_data(writer, attrs[a_name].value)
   File  
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site- 
packages/_xmlplus/dom/minidom.py", line 304, in _write_data
     data = data.replace("&", "&amp;").replace("<", "&lt;")
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'replace'

My environment is:
Python 2.3 (#2, Jul 30 2003, 11:45:28)
[GCC 3.1 20020420 (prerelease)] on darwin

Regards,
amn