oo design question - how to avoid a factory

After reading through the http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop.newref.php page about references in constructors, I ask to all of you, how do you avoid using a factory method in PHP4? Here is my code in question (the abridged version): class Structures_DataGrid extends Structures_DataGrid_Renderer {

    function Structures_DataGrid($limit = null, $page = 1,
                                 $renderer = DATAGRID_RENDER_TABLE)
    {
        parent::Structures_DataGrid_Renderer($renderer, $limit, $page);
    }

} class Structures_DataGrid_Renderer extends Structures_DataGrid_Core {

    var $renderer;

    function Structures_DataGrid_Renderer($renderer = DATAGRID_RENDER_TABLE, $limit = null, $page = 1)
    {
        if (PEAR::isError($this->setRenderer($renderer))) {
            $this->setRenderer(DATAGRID_RENDER_TABLE);
        }

        parent::Structures_DataGrid_Core($limit, $page);

        // Automatic handling of GET/POST/COOKIE variables
        $this->_parseHttpRequest();
    }

    function setRenderer($renderer)
    {
        $class = 'Structures_DataGrid_Renderer_' . $renderer;
        $file = 'Structures/DataGrid/Renderer/' . $renderer . '.php';

        if (@include_once($file)) {
            $this->renderer = new $class($this);
        } else {
            return new PEAR_Error('Invalid renderer');
        }

        return true;
    }

} The problem is, the renderer has no values in the datagrid variable upon rendering because of the PHP4 issue of creating a reference during construction. Is their anyway of avoiding this? Could using a factory instead of a constructor be confusing to the non-savvy user? Thanks for any advice Andrew