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common[e82,jmc]		Draft message to Kahn about Common Lisp.

Dear Bob:

	I have become impressed with the Common Lisp effort, and I
think it has the potential to bring considerable order out of
chaos and to reduce duplication of effort.  I attended
the August Common Lisp meeting at CMU, and this impression was
confirmed.

	I have become concerned about the probable effect of
the departure of Guy Steele from CMU to Tartan Labs.  First,
he won't have much time, although at present he intends to
continue maintaining the manual and scheduling the meetings.
Second, if, as he hopes,
Tartan Labs does some Lisp implementation, he may no longer
have the perceived neutral position needed to reconcile the interests
of the companies involved in Lisp implementation.

	For these reasons, I wonder if you will consider supporting
some work at Stanford on Common Lisp.  Dick Gabriel would be the
direct head of the project with my advice and support, and the main
objectives would be the following:

	1. Maintaining the discussion and organizing the meetings.

	2. Supplementing Steele's efforts on the Manual and taking
it over if he becomes unable to continue.

	3. Starting the so-called Yellow Pages.  This would be
a library of useful Lisp functions, macros, documentation and
techniques.  In my opinion, there hasn't been a really good
library for any programming language since the demise of the
IBM 7094.

	There would not be another Common
Lisp implementation involved in the proposal.  Should we decide
to do this, it might be the subject of a separate proposal.

	In addition to some technical contributions, I think I
can increase the probability that the Lisp efforts will focus
on one language.

	This idea has the support of Guy Steele, so we won't be
at cross purposes.  Dick Gabriel thinks it will meet with the
support of the other people taking part in the Common Lisp
discussions, and we plan to float it with them if we get an
expression of interest from DARPA.

John McCarthy