I don't think that non-template friends should be defined inline in a class template because they are always supposed to be instantiated regardless of whether they are used or not (unlike ordinary members).
[snip]
Sorry. I reacted automatically, because of the problems that I've had with inline friends. In this case, I think it's not a problem to define them inline.
[pedanticism] Don't both your examples rely on pre-standard C++ friend declarations and definitions injecting the function name in the innermost enclosing namespace? I might be reading this worng, but 7.3.1.2 [namespace.memdef] paragraph 3 states: "The name of the friend is not found by unqualified lookup (3.4.1) or by qualified lookup (3.4.3) until a matching declaration is provided in that namespace scope". So you'd still need to declare in the namespace. From what I understand the examples shouldn't work. Correct me if I'm wrong :) JF