Testing the waters.

[Marcus G. Daniels]

CB>  You won't get portability from LispOS to other versions of CL in
CB> any case, because you won't have the POS ported to the other
CB> version of CL. And POSes are always very tightly integrated with
CB> the virtual machine and garbage collector, and application code.

I think it is not so much "and", but "or".  Either we strive to make
the POS as transparent as possible, or it is up to the application.
If there is significant labor on the part of the application, a
programmer might as well use pathnames and do object archiving by
hand.

The result of a transparent POS in LispOS should be that programs
written for LispOS have very minimal responsibilities
w.r.t. persistence.  

CB>  You may get your existing CL lisp programs working on LispOS, but
CB> they won't do things the LispOS way, so they fall into the general
CB> category of how to get legacy applications working on LispOS.

CV> I don't understand this at all.  What is the LispOS way?  How does
CV> it prohibit my application from *working* on other platforms?  My
CV> view of LispOS is essentially a LispM with some updated bells and
CV> whistles.  Maybe your view is differnet and that is why we are
CV> talking past each other.

If there is not a better and easier LispOS way, then what is the point
of using LispOS?  Sure, if someone wants to go out of their way to use
antiquated and gratuitous features for the sake of portability, they
can do that.