My recollection is that we decided that we probably did not need MajorVersion, MinorVersion, AssertionID, Conditions, or Advice for XACML (it seems highly unlikely that anyone would write a rule/policy in which an attribute was qualified by a MinorVersion or an Advice element, whereas it is certainly possible that someone would want to qualify an attribute by Issuer). So, making them more compact is certainly one goal.

However, given that we're defining the "Holder" schema, we do have the freedom to make other changes if we want (e.g., not using the NameQualifier and Format attributes). My preference is not to make such changes lightly (i.e., unless it seems critically important), but we do have this freedom...

Carlisle.