Overloading property vs. non-property

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Chad J (chadjoan at __spam.is.bad__gmail.com)'s article
> On 07/15/2010 09:16 AM, dsimcha wrote:
> > Once property syntax is fully enforced (not necessarily recommended) will it
> > be possible to overload properties against non-properties?  My use case is
> > that I'm thinking about API improvements for my dflplot lib and one thing that
> > I would really like is to give a fluent interface to everything to further cut
> > back on the amount of boilerplate needed to generate simple plots.  For example:
> >
> > Histogram(someData, 10)
> >     .barColor(getColor(255, 0, 0))
> >     .histType(HistType.Probability)
> >     .toFigure.title("A Histogram")
> >     .xLabel("Stuff").showAsMain();
> >
> > The problem is that I also want things like barColor and title to be settable
> > via normal property syntax, using the equals sign.  Right now, this "just
> > works" because D's current non-analness about enforcing @property-ness is
> > awesome 99% of the time even if it leads to a few weird corner cases.  Will
> > there be a way to express such an interface to be provided (calling a setter
> > as either a member function or a property at the user's choice) once @property
> > is fully implemented?
> >
> Wasn't this going to be handled by normal non- at property functions?
> I was under the impression that normal functions/methods with no
> arguments would still allow omission of parentheses and the assignments
> would still be rewritten to 1-arg calls.  As long as the semantics of it
> are handled correctly then that syntax will be safe; it just has to do
> what the programmer /expects/.
> The @property syntax can resolve some ambiguities, so they are quite
> useful if you want to say, return a zero-argument delegate from a
> property.

This is what I'd vote for, but it's not what TDPL says.  Page 156:

"In particular 'property' is recognized by the compiler and signals the fact that
the function bearing such an attribute must be called without the trailing ()."