In looking through the MediaWiki schema (both current and new), I've noticed that page titles are given a max length of 255 chars. However, it seems that in some cases, this title includes the namespace, and in others it does not -- namespace is stored as an Int or is implied by context (eg, categorylinks, imagelinks).
This sounds a warning klaxon in my head. Is my concern misplaced? Would it make sense to always use the namespace (as an int) plus title (without namespace) to reference a page (again, unless implied by context)?
Rich Holton en.wikipedia:User:Rholton