[libxml++] default namespace

[panoply att net]

The reading I've done tells me that with XML1.1 there is no way to use default namespaces in XPath searches.  Ok, so now I'd like to know the work-around.  One thing I found in another post was this:

-------------------------------------------------------
What I can do, is register some dummy namespace:

eg:
     xmlNodePtr current_node=(get this node some magic way);
     xmlNsPtr nsdefptr = current_node->nsDef;
     if(nsdefptr != NULL) {
	 if(nsdefptr->prefix == NULL) {
	    xmlXPathRegisterNs(xpath_context,
			       (const xmlChar *)"dummy",
			       nsdefptr->href);
          }
     }

     but in this case I have to prefix all my XPath query
element id's (which are meant to be in the default namespace)
with dummy: (eg  <foo/> needs XPath: /dummy:foo) 
------------------------------------------------------------
taken from: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2003-April/msg00143.html

If I understand the above code correctly, it is assigning a prefix to the default namespace, then using that prefix in XPath searches.  Is that correct?  I AM PERFECTLY HAPPY resolving my problem this way (if it will work).  But I want to find out if this can be done through the libxml++ wrapper - and if this over-all approach is Kosher.

-Brent