namespaces?

Andi and Zeev, Remember when we discussed namespaces at the PDM? I'd like to pick up that thread. The PEAR community wants namespaces. :) You might argue that classes provide this, but in the end they don't. Classes can not encapsulate constants or classes. What most people want seems to be what Java has: 1. A user-selectable symbol table (ala "package nnn" in Java/C++) 2. Symbol aliasing, ala "import" in Java/Python) 3. Language constructs that load code from a given name space (ala "use" in Perl). This was attempted once for PHP, but it ended up as something else and finally "gave birth" to the *_once functions as a kind of middle-ground. These are features that I and the rest of the PEAR community really want to see in Zend 2.0 in order to make PEAR able to grow without much pain. - Stig