Ralph Schindler proposed a series of class member organizational conventions that we can adopt for improving the readability and consistency of the framework code base. I've modified them slightly for clarity and to include others' responses to the mailing list thread:

http://nabble.com/Class-member-orgainizational-con…

Properties should appear at the top of the class definition followed by methods.

Class members (both properties and methods) should be organized by visibility: {{public}} first, {{protected}} second, and {{private}} last.

Special methods such as {{__construct()}}, {{__destruct()}}, {{__clone()}}, {{__sleep()}}, {{__wakeup()}}, {{__get()}}, {{__set()}}, {{__isset()}}, {{__isset()}}, {{__unset()}}, {{__call()}}, {{__toString()}}, and {{__set_state()}} should appear first in the list of methods, in the order presented here, as needed by the class.

Static methods should be listed before instance methods.

Static methods should have the visibility written first, as illustrated in the php manual at [http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.static.php]:

public static $myStatic = 'foo';
public static function aStaticMethod()
{}

Finally, methods should be grouped logically by execution order, developer need, etc., where appropriate. For example: {{setOptions()}} appears before {{start()}}, which appears before {{stop()}}, since this is the most logical order of usage.