Incorrect, a name for a feature should show what kind of functionality we implemented. Picking names just for marketing reasons
"Oh see, PHP has namespaces" is a bad idea.
I, on the contrary, think it is a good idea to consider perception. Perception is important, especially for low-barrier language like PHP. For a language that requires PhD to program in it you can call anything by any name - PhDs would figure that out. But for language like PHP I think we should make it as perceptually comfortable as we can.
My perception is that when people talk about "namespaces" they usually mean logical separation of things in, well, naming space, and when they talk "packages" they usually mean files on disk and putting things into files and finding which thing is in which file. Our implementation is much more former than the later. Of course, my perception is mine, and everybody is entitled to have their own ones, but I would very much like to hear an argument which is not a Siamese twin of "because C++ namespaces have braces and PHP ones don't". If that would be the only reason, I don't think it is a good one. If there are more reasons - I would very much like to hear it before we rush forward and commit things that would influence PHP for next 10 years.
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Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
stas@zend.com http://www.zend.com/
(408)253-8829 MSN: stas@zend.com