Good (and floating) point.
Boom boom! ;-) How about this:
$antler.bar; $xyzzy.:bar; $blah. .bar; $foo. .bar; That is, introduce only the non-space-filled .: variant, and retain the space-filled long dot.
But do we really need *three* distinct forms of method call, in addition to the (easily alignable) indirect object syntax? Is: > $antler. .bar; > $xyzzy. .bar; > $blah. .bar; > $foo. .bar; really so intolerable, for those who are gung-ho to line up the method names? Damian