1. To me dot notation will be much less cluttered than -> when you have a lot of complex data structures and OO structures that go fairly deep. This is a more mature way of stating point 5, that "." is one less character than "->". But the point is good -- a less cluttered syntax is a better one in most cases.
2. It really doesn't need to be used for derefrencing, just for OO. Which basically means it won't be necessary there, so I won't comment.
3. Just about every other language that supports OO uses dot notation (could be all, but I'm covering my bases). It takes away a reason not to use Perl. Which is, as you put it, a reason to be found "in LW's ass." rchiav and I have made the same point here.
4. Perl is going to have much better OO functionality. It's not just going to be something that's hacked on top of what's already there (like now). This has very little (if anything) to do with why we're changing from "->" to ".".
5. It's one less character. See point 1.

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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
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