Hi Lukas,
We have 4 options. We know how things are without namespaces, we know how things are with the current implementation. This essentially leaves 2 choices that are untested for now.
True, true.
Both of these approaches have some uncleanness to them. If functions and constants get pushed to the global namespace while classes end up in the current namespace on include it can lead to some surprises. At the same time offering an ambiguous syntax to solve ambiguity when it occurs is also not beautiful. If we try out one of them in alpha3 and are unhappy I would not want an alpha4 to try out yet another one. But we will have the alpha3 either way at this point. So we could say lets try out the one that most people prefer for alpha3. If it sucks, we kick it out and move on.
Good thinking - but we'll still see the same arguments even if most of us think it sucks.
Then we can alternatively push it to PHP 6 or drop the idea all together.
Dropping the idea altogether's unlikely to be an option now.
I know that Dmitry and Greg were both thinking over alternative approaches, which did not yet come to a conclusion. Most of that revolves around other separators between or around namespaces. So we can keep cooking that.
Yeah... I never had a response to ::: so I guess that one's been dumped out of hand somewhere off-list, but darn I hate -> reuse with a passion!
Namespaces have turned out to be insanely complex. However it seems to me like most people that are voting are doing this on the basis that they feel that the problem itself is not yet understood by Stas/ Dmitry.
Far from it. It's more that Stas/Dmitry (and Greg) have invested a lot of time and thought into the implementation and all three understandably want to see their work 'out there', whereas I'm far from alone in thinking it's just not ready to be 'out there' at this stage.
- Steph
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