we were saying, it looks like a package, wtf is it???

Perhaps internal, protected and namespace should all be diamonds but different colors. I would still like to be able to see whether the var is associated with namespace or the protected identifier.

In addition to the four you mentioned, there is one more: a blue triangle. That means “internal”. Internal is the default access applied to a variable if you don’t specify what access to use; or you can explicitly use the “internal” keyword to denote this. (The blue triangle, like the green circle, yellow diamond, and red square, comes from Eclipse’s JDT.)

Okay, now what’s up with that crazy “package” symbol? Well, it means that the variable’s access is scoped by a user-defined namespace. For example:

private namespace mynamespace = “http://www.morearty.com”;
mynamespace var myvar;

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with this whole thing. For one thing, as you noticed, there are actually bugs with the package (namespace) icon — we sometimes show that icon on variables that should actually have some other icon.

But even if we fix that (and we will), there is a bigger problem: All these icons are just too confusing. Especially the blue triangle (internal) and the “package” icon (namespace) — heck, I wrote the code, and yet even I get those two mixed up all the time. It’s too hard to remember five icons, especially when the differences between them are so subtle.

I’m open to suggestions. One possibility I’ve considered is lumping protected, internal, and namespace-scoped all under the yellow-dismond icon, so there are only three icons: green circle (public), yellow diamond (which you could think of, vaguely, as “halfway between public and private”), and red square (private).

Any other ideas?