Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0b3 released

Eric McKeown wrote: > On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, Randy Jay Yarger wrote: > > There is a lot to be said for abstraction. There is also alot to be said > > for having abstraction in the core as writing 'pure core' PHP makes it > > trivial to move to another PHP-aware system. Using PHPLIB limits you to > > systems with PHPLIB installed. > > True, but installation of PHPLIB is trivial. Any user responsible for the > maintenance of a document hierarchy can install PHPLIB for use with that > hierarchy, since PHPLIB is just a set of PHP scripts. Installation of > PHPLIB is really not that daunting; any user with access to a PHP > interpreter and a SQL backend should be able to install and use it. This is not true when using virtual hosting for 100s, maybe 1000s, of clients on a single server. The nightmare of trying to update and _maintain_ so many versions of PHPLIB is the reason I won't use it. PHP4 core session management is a god-send... database abstraction and templates are coming so a single installation of a reusable (ie; OO) set of classes is needed and could be "trivial" to not only install but maintain over the longer term... PHPLIB in it's current form is great for singular sites but almost useless for professional vhosting. There would be at least a 100 to 1 ratio of webmasters to vhost clients and almost all vhost clients I am aware of are not capable of installing PHPLIB, in fact most would not know what it is, but they _are_ capable of creating links in their FP/Composer originated web pages to point to PHP based apps. Once the dust settles on PHP4 and a matching set of "standard library classes" to support various common web apps becomes available then I can see a ten fold increase of PHP usage by non-tech vhost clients. --markc