OOP and Future of PHP

The only thing that I feel lack of in PHP is the real Object Oriented stuff, such as information hiding in the object in classes i.e. private and public variables, methods/functions. This in a sene make it really difficult for developer to build an API for other developers that is secure. I myself have this problem. Is there any reasons why PHP was designed like this from the beginning? Is this issue going to be addresses somehow in the future? Anyone has any idea? If anyone has any idea, or tricks to hide information in a variables or method in a class, or in other words, make a variable or method a private, I would really like to know. Thanks for any comments. Reuben D. Budiardja Web Database Application Programmer / Analyst Devcorps, ITS Goshen College, IN 46526