I thought it was closer to convention to have it the way I proposed. This is why I said "I see no other way to **not** drastically break with namespace convention".

Regardless, the reason that exported and non exported names were in different namespaces stemmed from the original proposal's idea to establish namespaces in an export-declaration, for exported names. I was not aware that this was such a horrific break from convention that the only way I could have come up with it was that I was scared of my proposal being rejected if it did not break with convention.

Thank you for all of your helpful advice, genuinely, and on the off-chance that you, or anyone else on this public mailing list, decide(s) to take a look, I have attached the (near-)final draft paper.