Simplifying ZF: Scope of Variables in View and Controller

As a follow up on the Zend Framework, "Web 2.0 Framework" My Ass! article referenced earlier I came up with some simplifications of the Zend View and Controller variable coupling.

Using some code in the article I created a new Zend_View_Extended class which offers the possibility to circumvent the access of variables via $this and directly registers each variable key of the Zend_View object as an own variable in the script template:

class Zend_View_Extended extends Zend_View_Abstract
{
    protected function _run()
    {
        while( list( $k, $v ) = each( $this ) ) ${$k} = $v;

        include func_get_arg(0); 
    }
}

Now rather than calling $this->data you can call $data in a script template. Of course this comes with additional overhead of each variable being registered twice. I don't know how this handles performance wise, but maybe unsetting $this variables after copying solves this. Also you have to overwrite the initView() method of your base Controller Action class.

Another simplification would be to allow for the following direct variable settings in any Controller Action, which would shorten the $this->view->variable call, to derive the same functionality via $this->variable. I haven't tested this though.

class Zend_Controller_SimpleAction extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
    function __set($name, $value)
    {
        $this->view->{$name} = $value;
    }
}