Why doesn't a using-declaration work to solve the diamond problem?

Question

Please consider the following code:

struct A
{
    void f()
    {
    }
};

struct B1 : A
{
};

struct B2 : A
{
};

struct C : B1, B2
{
    void f() // works
    {
        B1::f();
    }
    //using B1::f; // does not work
    //using B1::A::f; // does not work as well
};

int main()
{
    C c;
    c.f();

    return 0;
}

I kindly ask you not to copy paste a standard reply on how to solve the diamond problem ("use virtual inheritance"). What I am asking here is why doesn't a using-declaration work in this case. The exact compiler error is:

In function 'int main()':
prog.cpp:31:6: error: 'A' is an ambiguous base of 'C'
  c.f();

I got the impression a using-declaration should work from this example:

struct A
{
    void f()
    {
    }
};

struct B
{
    void f()
    {
    }
};

struct C : A, B
{
    using A::f;
};

int main()
{
    C c;
    c.f(); // will call A::f

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Someone else can find the standard quote but I'm going to explain conceptually.

It doesn't work because a using-declaration only affects name lookup.

Your using-declaration causes name lookup to succeed where it would otherwise fail, that is, it tells the compiler where to find the function f. But it does not tell it which A subobject f acts on, that is, which one will be passed as the implicit this parameter when f is called.

There is only a single function A::f even though there are two A subobjects of C, and it takes an implicit this argument of type A*. In order to call it on a C object, C* must be implicitly converted to A*. This is always ambiguous, and is not affected by any using-declarations.

(This makes more sense if you put data members inside A. Then C would have two of each such data member. When f is called, if it accesses data members, does it access the ones in the A subobject inherited from B1, or the ones in the A subobject inherited from B2?)