I just noticed a message under "Alternative syntax for 
control structures" indicating it was deprecated as of PHP4 
and might disappear entirely!

PLEASE don't!

I make EXTENSIVE use of this feature, and far from making 
unreadable code, it enables me to MUCH more easily keep 
track of everything! I have LOTS of scripts that go back 
and forth from PHP to HTML, and I would go nuts if I could 
not use the alternate control structures to keep stuff 
organized and neat, especially with if statements and for 
loops.

The alternate structures enable me to cogently allow code 
to be passed with a minimum of echo commands, and make it 
much easier for me to go back and forth between my code 
editor and Dreamweaver, which I use for design and layout. 
The alternate structures show up as discrete script tags, 
and remain intact, while I am able to edit the appearance 
of the html as I wish. If you remove this functionality, 
Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors may have no good way 
of knowing where code should end and design begin.I'll be 
cutting and pasting and pulling my hair out.

There's a lot of people attempting to convince Dreamweaver 
to provide direct suport for PHP and MySQL the way it does 
for ASP/MS-SQL/Cold Fusion, etc. Since it's major web dev 
package, that would be good for PHP, I think. I suspect 
that removing the alternate syntax might make this harder.