I stored my document into an eXist database collection. The file extension is html. I used every different form of application that I could find. Nothing worked. The simple fact of the matter is that if I place namespaces inside my html document, it simply won't work. This is a major html oversight that needs to be corrected.

It won't happen, the way the W3C has taken with HTML5 is to predefine the vocabulary of HTML, SVG and MathML and to not support any prefixed and namespaced element or attribute names with a few exceptions like xlinkorum :href for SVG. I am not familiar with exist, but I am sure they have some user forum where someone can help with serving a document as application/xhtml+xml instead of text/html.

Then perhaps it's time someone overrides the w3c. They obviously have forgotten the simple principle of Keep It Simple Stupid. This is far from simple. Web browsers should ignore namespaces when webpages are opened. The only real use of a namespace is when documents are validated. And I don't know any web browser that validates documents. I think web browsers should include a complimentary validator, but I guess the w3c is too lazy to create web browser validators.

I'm afraid you're asking in the wrong place here. We're XML folks here, and we find the reluctance of the browser vendors to embrace XML as frustrating as you do. (In fact, it's the browser vendors who decided to override W3C on this.)

Rest assured, though, that it IS possible to get browsers to display SVG graphics if you get all the incantations right.

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Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer\'s Reference