Language 'standards' for LispOS

[Christopher J. Vogt]

At 11:42 AM -0500 5/17/97, Henry G. Baker wrote:
>Re Common Lisp, Scheme, etc.:
[... much good stuff I endorse completely ...]
>
>The whole argument-passing stuff in CL is too baroque, and needs to be
>factored into some much simpler primitives which can still implement
>things like optional/keyword arguments and multiple returned values
>moderately efficiently.  Please note that when CL first came out, a
>number of older lisps offered CL compatibility packages which
>implemented the more complex CL arg/value stuff on top of a simpler
>lisp.  I suggest that we do the same thing, but this time we get to
>design the more primitive lisp ourselves.

Not surprisingly, Henry has lots of good suggestions, and has summarized
them eloquently.  I didn't edit out the above paragraph because I'm going
to refer to  it obliquely.  I have mentioned in previous postings my
believe in CL compatibility.  This is important, I think, in two differing
ways.  Firstly, I want to *easily* port CL code written on other machines
to LispOS and Secondly, I want to easily port code written under LispOS to
other machines.  As long as we have a CL package for example that adhered
to the standard CL, I think my two desires could be met.

So, I think it is grand to have a "simpler" Lisp that is a subset of CL, as
well as a more "complex" lisp that is a superset of CL.


[... more good stuff I endorse ...]

Christopher (Chris) J. Vogt
mailto:vogt@novia.net
Omaha, NE
http://www.novia.net/~vogt/