PEAR Standards (was Re: equivalent of asp's <%= strTest %>)

I have some problems with the PEAR "standards", and I'm wondering what others have to say about what the PHP developers are doing to overcome PHP's obvious shortcomings. <bitch> <moan> It seems that one obvious improvement to be made to PHP would be the implementation of real namespaces. It seems pretty simple to implement this and stay backwards compatible with PHP3/4. Does anyone know if plans are in the work for this? The PEAR standards try to make up for the lack of namespaces . . . and I suppose its the best that can be done, but it's simply awful! It not only proposes a standard, it proposes to mandate naming conventions and coding style as well! I think the PHP developers should look to the example that Perl has set for graceful, non-obtrusive namespaces that don't enforce coding style or naming conventions for classes. (I mean, I don't have to name a subclass of "DB" "DB_mysql" -- it can be "DB::Mysql".) </moan> </bitch> "Michael Kimsal" <michael@tapinternet.com> wrote in message news:3ACF4794.86A78371@tapinternet.com... > If the people defining the PEAR standards really were that interested in > standards, why include alternate ways of doing something? <?=$blah;?> > And if the 'short tag' method is useful enough for people, why 'exclude' it > from a standard? This notion of 'PEAR standards' does irk me some, because > it's been so long in coming, and people are deferring to it before it's a reality. First of all, I think that the PEAR folk are on a different endeavor than the PHP developers. The PEAR people seem to be trying to propose a good standard for a language that needs some improvement. They're doing a decent job, but I think PEAR should wait till PHP matures a bit. Second, there is one very good reason not to use short tags: XML. All the same, I'd rather just enable ASP tags than do away with short tags, as short tags are irreplacable in templates rich in content and sparse on code. My $0.02. Dean Hall. http://hall.apt7.com