I see your point... but wouldn't it be better not to need that? Johannes' idea seemed good to me, always assuming it's do-able.
Well, yes, it would indeed, but we have a lot of <?= templates now so either we allow <?= on no-short-tags (if XML guys out there will be OK with it I might be OK too, as IMO no valid XML would have <?=) or invent some other syntax - in which case a) it probably would be worse than <?= since you hardly can get shorter and "opening tag + =" is kind-of de-facto standard for such things by now and b) it's take time to educate people to use new syntax, especially that unlike <?= it won't work on PHP < 5.3 so people would stay away from it for a couple of years (heck, people still use PHP 4 out there! not talking about 5.0).
So we have this:
1. Leave it as is and be in World of Configuration Pain (TM)
2. Allow <?= independent of short tags (my +1, dunno about XML templates guys)
3. Invent some <?bleh and watch nobody using it
4. Accept runtime short tags
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Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
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