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∂17-Mar-86 2120 RPG Welcome
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
...to the world of international standarization. This mailing list
is the forum for private discussions regarding the strategic aspects
of the standardization effort. The contents of the messages transmitted
on this list are archived in a private, non-accessible file at SAIL.
If you choose to also archive these messages, please guard their
privacy.
The members of this list are:
rpg,
gls%Think.COM
jmc
squires@isi
Mathis@isif
ohlander@isie
fahlman@cmuc
bobrow.pa@xerox
CL-Steering-from-SU-AI@Stony-Brook.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
(= Moon and Weinreb)
bawden@mc
rees@mc
griss@hplabs
which includes the members of the technical committee as well as those
of the steering committee. The steering committee members are:
rpg,
gls%Think.COM
jmc
squires@isi
Mathis@isif
ohlander@isie
-rpg-
∂21-Mar-86 1842 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Getting things rolling
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Mar 86 18:38:46 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 21 Mar 86 21:40:07-EST
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1986 21:40 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12192608724.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Getting things rolling
I'm sending this to the steering committee because that mailing list has
the technical people on it as well. And these issues of how to get
started involve all of us.
Here are some things that we need to do, in more or less the order in
which I think we need to deal with them. The list is probably not
complete, so feel free to propose additions to it. Entires are marked
with S (steering), T (technical), S&T (both) and S,T (each committee
separately).
Get the two committees organized. Probably we don't need much
organization, but some sort of chairman or moderator is needed for each
-- someone who will feel responsible for goosing the agenda along. (S,T)
Make a list of formal things that the steering committee needs to do as
part of the ANSI and ISO formalities. Is some sort of a kick-off
meeting necessary? (S)
Conduct a poll on the Common Lisp mailing list (and maybe by other
channels) to identify what companies have people participating in
this process, even if they are content merely to observe. Prepare
a list of such participating companies, along with the name and address
of a contact person at each. This will be used for formal X3J13
notifications, etc. It will also make it clear to everyone that many
companies are participants in this process, even if they don't have
someone on the Technical committee. (S)
Determine if there are any companies (or other implementation groups)
that need arpanet access but don't have it. Try to get them accounts
somewhere. (S)
Try to establish reliable netmail contact with Japan. Once this is in
place, select a Japanese member for the technical committee. (Masayuki
Ida was discussed earlier, but we couldn't get mail to him, though mail
from him has reached me.) (S)
Send an embassy to the Eulisp people and see if they have any interest
at all in participating in this process, given our unreasonable desire
to standardize something like the current Common Lisp and not start
over as they are doing. If they want to participate, invite one or more
European members to join the committee. Netmail seems not to be a
problem. (S)
Decide on how we are going to run the technical decision-making process,
how we are going to record and communicate the results, and what sort of
form the standard document will take. (S&T). I'll describe some
thoughts I have on this issue in a later message.
Decide what major areas we are going to try to fix and/or extend in this
first version of the standard. Make for ourselves some guidelines on
how deeply we want to change things. Set ourselves a realistic schedule
for completing the first spec. (T)
Provide some guidance to the ISI folks about what services are most
needed, and what their priorities should be. (S&T)
Create an inventory of issues that have been raised. Guy made a start
at this, but it needs to be kept up to date. Divide these issues into
three classes: issues where we think there is (or could easily be)
agreement on the right solution, isolated issues that are controversial,
and issues that are all tangled together in rotten areas of the current
spec (e.g. that part about what the compiler does). (T)
For the issues where there is or could be agreement, confirm this on the
mailing list and then record the decisions so that they don't unravel
again. (T)
Debate the isolated but controversial issues in public, then make the
decisions and record them. (T)
For areas where many interrelated things need work, choose someone in
each case to put together a comprehensive proposal. Then debate the
result and nail it down. (T)
As coherent proposals for extensions appear (error, objects, whatever),
run these through the process. If there are areas where progress is
needed but no proposals exist, find someone willing to take a crack at
it. (T)
Make a final pass over the completed specification document (T) and try
to get it through ISO and ANSI (S).
Get to work on Common Lisp 2001. (Whoever survives.)
-- Scott
∂21-Mar-86 2038 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documenting our decisions
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Mar 86 20:38:46 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 21 Mar 86 23:40:10-EST
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1986 23:40 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12192630575.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Documenting our decisions
It seems to me that we want to focus on the production of a coherent,
complete document for ANSI Common Lisp (maybe later to be ISO Common
Lisp). We can't really expect the community to rally around the
existing Digital Press book plus a long list of corrections and a couple
of new chapters. Nor are we likely to find as many of the problems and
inconsistencies if we just handle each problem as an isolated issue.
Our most productive periods in developing this language were when we
were trying to hammer out large sections of the book to meet a deadline.
I don't think that a new edition of the Steele book will do the job.
Digital Press has been reasonably cooperative so far, but I doubt that
they will give up their copyright, and we just cannot produce a document
for the Common Lisp standard that says "Copyright Digital Press" on it.
If that book were in the public domain, we could use its actual text as
a starting point, but I don't see this happening. So it looks like we
have to develop a new document. Of course, the Common Lisp it describes
will be very similar to the Common Lisp described in Steele.
Ideally, there should be two documents, both kept online in some form
that most people can easily FTP and print (TeX?), and both kept up to
date as each decision is made. One of these documents would be the
manual documenting the proposed standard; the other would be a list of
all the deliberate incompatible changes that we have made to the
language as described in the original silver book. When we're done, the
former is our report to ANSI; the latter is a guide for all the
companies that need to update their implementations and all the users
who need to fix things in their code. The standard document needs to be
as clear and unambiguous as we can make it; it does NOT necessarily need
to be organized a a tutorial or as a convenient manual for the working
programmer, nor does it need to be subtly witty. There will presumably
be a lively market for other Common Lisp books, including the
second edition of Steele, that will fill those needs, but the new
document should become the definitive language standard.
These documents should either be public-domain or they should be
copyrighted by someone not associated with a manufacturer. If
copyrighted, there should be explicit blanket permission for anyone to
reproduce the document without charge, as long as the text is reproduced
in its entirety and any additions to the text are clearly marked as
such. [Question: is a public-domain document acceptable to ANSI and
ISO, or do they require the ability to copyright the thing for
themselves? After being burned once, I'm not too keen on working on
this thing and yielding up the copyright to ANYONE.]
Several times in the last few months I have come close to volunteering
to write a new, public-domain manual meeting the above conditions and to
keep it online here at CMU. This impulse arose out of frustration at
seeing issues be almost settled and then unravel again. Each time I've
thought about this, I've come to my senses. Writing a new manual from
scratch is more work than I am prepared to do in the next year. But
Gabriel tells me that Lucid has written a new manual, equivalent in
content but not in form to the Steele book, and therefore free of the
Digital Press copyright. He also says that Lucid might be willing to
put the sources for this document in the public domain to serve as a
starting point for the new specification.
I haven't seen this new manual yet, but if it's in good shape and if we
can indeed arrange to use it without awkward restrictions, I will
probably volunteer to hammer it into a spec and to keep it up to date
(with a little help from my friends at CMU and, I hope, from all of
you). It would be kept online and freely FTP'able at CMU. We will not
get into the hardcopy business, but maybe ISI can do that, charging
enough for copies to recoup the costs or maybe some company will decide
to crank these out quickly and cheaply.
The model would be that I get this into some initial kind of shape while
the rest of you debate the issues currently on the table. Maybe some of
the rest of you can work on particular sections. Once the document is
presentable and in line with current truth, we make a few passes through
it, chapter by chapter, debating and fixing problems and ambiguities as
we find them. Once we're happy, we ship it up to X3J13.
If anyone has a different model of how to do this, please speak up. If
there's anyone else out there who would like to do this, I'd be happy to
step aside or would be willing to help carry some part of the load. But
please don't volunteer unless you're really serious about doing this.
If we end up with a big backlog of changes to go in, things rot quickly.
Please note: I said I MIGHT volunteer for this, and that sentence had a
couple of "if's" in it.
-- Scott
∂25-Mar-86 0313 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Documenting our decisions
Received: from GODOT.THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 25 Mar 86 03:12:57 PST
Received: from wenceslas by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Mon, 24 Mar 86 14:35:16 est
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 86 14:37 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Documenting our decisions
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12192630575.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-Id: <860324143710.8.GLS@THINK-WENCESLAS.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1986 23:40 EST
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
...
I don't think that a new edition of the Steele book will do the job.
Digital Press has been reasonably cooperative so far, but I doubt that
they will give up their copyright, and we just cannot produce a document
for the Common Lisp standard that says "Copyright Digital Press" on it.
If that book were in the public domain, we could use its actual text as
a starting point, but I don't see this happening. So it looks like we
have to develop a new document. Of course, the Common Lisp it describes
will be very similar to the Common Lisp described in Steele.
...
The standard document needs to be
as clear and unambiguous as we can make it; it does NOT necessarily need
to be organized a a tutorial or as a convenient manual for the working
programmer, nor does it need to be subtly witty. There will presumably
be a lively market for other Common Lisp books, including the
second edition of Steele, that will fill those needs, but the new
document should become the definitive language standard.
It seems to me that there are two issues that are somewhat orthogonal:
(a) Can the ANSI effort begin with some form of the Digital press book,
or must a new document begin from scratch?
(b) Should we plan to bring out an interim edition to tide us over to the
point where something officially ANSI comes out (even in draft form)?
If the answer to (b) is yes, then a subissue is whether it should be a
second edition with Digital Press or published through some other mechanism,
such as agreeing that the Lucid document is the right thing from now on.
If the answer to (a) is no, then I would be leery of having a "competing"
new edition out of Digital press coming out at roughly the same time as the
ANSI standard, because that would only create confusion as to which is the
"real" standard, and I would rather avoid such confusion. Better to let the
Digital press book die a natural death and put my efforts into the ANSI
version.(*)
On the other hand, I worked pretty hard on the book to get a lot of subtle
things right. It is certainly not deathless prose, but it has been polished
a lot, and it would be a pity for the ANSI committee not to be able to take
advantage of that. Then again, maybe it would be a good exercise to chuck
the whole thing and start over and really get it right; more work, but
potentially bigger payoff in accuracy and clarity at the end. There is also
the possibility that the Lucid document (which I have not yet seen) is
exactly the right thing. I would be happy if it were so.
--Guy
(*) I decided to dig up my contract with Digital Press and scan it for
loopholes and traps, and found this clause, a potential pitfall for the
"natural death" theory: "The Author agrees to revise the Work for
subsequent editions if the Publisher considers it in the best interests of
the Work. [I have no idea how a Work can have "interests". --GLS] ...
Should the Author be unable or unwilling to provide such a revision... the
Publisher may have the revised edition prepared... and may display in the
revised Work and in advertising, the name of the person, or persons, who
prepared said revisions." What do I make of this? Barf.
∂25-Mar-86 0320 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documenting our decisions
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 25 Mar 86 03:20:44 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 25 Mar 86 05:39:04-EST
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1986 01:31 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12193437323.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documenting our decisions
In-reply-to: Msg of 24 Mar 1986 15:26-EST from OHLANDER at USC-ISIB.ARPA
Ron,
Thanks for your offer of help on the standards document. If we go for
this way of documenting our decisions, ISI will probably turn out to be
the right organization to do the distribution.
On the copyright issue, it seems a lot of work to set up some sort of
"Common Lisp Users Group" corportion just to hold onto the copyright.
We can do something like this if we have to, but unless there's some
clear need for a copyright it would be easier to just produce a
public-domain document that we can all use freely.
-- Scott
∂25-Mar-86 0321 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU [yuasa: forwarded]
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 25 Mar 86 03:17:53 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 25 Mar 86 05:36:21-EST
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 1986 23:12 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12193149846.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: [yuasa: forwarded]
Our original discussions of who should be on the technical and steering
committees took place on a smaller mailing list, but as we begin to
consider adding foreign members to these committees, I think that the
full steering and technical committees ought to be involved.
Unlike the situation in Europe, Common Lisp seems to be enthusiastically
accepted in Japan as the future standard for Lisp work. Of course,
there's also great interest in Prolog, but a lot of the companies are
quietly working on Lisp, leaving Prolog to ICOT. Anyway, it has been
our intention to add a Japanese member to the technical committee as
soon as possible.
Unfortunately, while the Japanese have occasionally sent netmail to me,
I seem to be unable to answer, and I gather that others in the U.S. have
been no more successful. The ability to stay in touch with the rest of
us by netmail and to read the Common Lisp mailing list is critical for
any prospective member of the technical committee. Have any of you had
success in sending mail over there? The message included below took
three days to reach me, and I have no idea if my attempt to reply will
work.
In our earlier discussions, the leading Japanese candidate for the
technical committee was Dr. Masayuki Ida, an assistant professor at
Aoyama Gakuin University. He is the one who translated the Common Lisp
manual into Japanese, and seems to be very active in setting up
communication among the Japanese Common Lisp community. Of course, we
want to consult with as many of the Japanese as possible before choosing
someone.
Mr. Yuasa and Mr. Hagiya of Kyoto University were also discussed. They
are technically very proficient, having implemented Kyoto Common Lisp
from scratch, with no direct help from the U.S. However, the feeling
was that they are perhaps too junior -- I think that they are the
equivalent of Research Associates in the U.S., and neither yet has his
Ph.D. The Japanese are very status conscious, so selecting a junior
person as the Japanese representative might be awkward.
Anyway, I just received the following message from Yuasa, and replied
with a test message that may or may not get through. I'll let you know
if I am able to establish contact (which would probably indicate that we
can reach Ida and some others as well). If my message doesn't make it
after a reasonable time, I'll send Yuasa some snailmail explaining that
we want to cooperate closely with them, but need reliable netmail first.
In any event, Yuasa and Hagiya should be added to the official X3J13
physical mailing list.
-- Scott
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 86 20:56:40+0900
From: yuasa at kurims.kurims.kyoto-u.junet
To: fahlman at cmu-cs-c.ARPA
Dear Prof. Fahlman,
Someone passed me your EMAIL on the Subject "Committee Membership for
ANSI/ISO" addressed to common-lisp@su-ai.arpa.
I am very much interested in joining the X3 Committees.
I strongly believe that we (Masami Hagiya and I) can contribute to the
standardization efforts of the US Common Lisp community.
As you may have already heard, our Common Lisp system KCL is running at more
than 150 sites in Japan on many different machines, including VAX, SUN,
Apollo Domain, and AT&T 3B2. In a sense, KCL itself is becoming the standard
in Japan. Many comments are coming to us about the language specification of
Common Lisp, and we ourselves have already got enough experiences with Common
Lisp. Indeed, half of the software produced in our institute is written in
Common Lisp now a days. We will publish an introduction book on Common Lisp
in this spring (in Japanese first, then hopefully translated into English).
Now that a wide-ranged computer network is available throughout Japan, we can
also play the role of the gateway between the US community and Japanese
community.
Could you please send me more information about the X3 Committees?
We are very happy if we can work for the world-wide cooperation of the
Lisp standardization.
Sincerely,
Taiichi Yuasa
Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences,
Kyoto University, Japan
nttlab!kurims!yuasa@Shasta.arpa
∂25-Mar-86 0333 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documenting our decisions
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 25 Mar 86 03:21:11 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 25 Mar 86 05:39:05-EST
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1986 01:59 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12193442413.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Guy Steele <gls@AQUINAS.THINK.COM>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documenting our decisions
In-reply-to: Msg of 24 Mar 1986 14:37-EST from Guy Steele <gls at THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
It seems to me that there are two issues that are somewhat orthogonal:
(a) Can the ANSI effort begin with some form of the Digital press book,
or must a new document begin from scratch?
(b) Should we plan to bring out an interim edition to tide us over to the
point where something officially ANSI comes out (even in draft form)?
If the answer to (a) were yes, that would make everyone's life easier,
but only if we get the manual completely out from under the Digital Press
copyright. I'm assuming that this won't happen. I'd rather spend time
writing a new version than hassling with Digital's lawyers.
On issue (b), I don't think we necessarily need an interim version in
the form of a book. The community of language implementors can track
the emerging standard. For users, the existing book will match the
existing implementations well enough, modulo some ambiguities and minor
fixes. Somewhere along the line we could produce a pamphlet that
documents these disambiguations, to be used with the existing book.
Once the new spec document is ready, according to us, we could find a
way to do a mass printing of it -- we don't need to wait till ANSI and
ISO do their thing.
If the Digital Press book were not the basis for the new standard
document, any second edition of that would be a private matter between
you and Digital Press. My thought was that an updated version of the
Digital Press book could appear just after the proposed standard is
finished. It would explictly point to the standard document as
definitive, but would try to describe the contents of that document in a
form more useful to the average Common Lisp user. The ANSI/ISO document
would be for implementors, language lawyers, and nit pickers.
-- Scott
∂25-Mar-86 0338 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: Documenting our decisions
Received: from USC-ISIB.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 25 Mar 86 03:37:59 PST
Date: 24 Mar 1986 12:26-PST
Sender: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: Re: Documenting our decisions
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA]24-Mar-86 12:26:10.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12192630575.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Scott,
I think that your concept of what has to be done to develop
a standard, public domain Common Lisp specification is exactly right.
I don't think copyrights should be assigned to ANSI or ISO or anyone
else that could lay some later claim to them. On the other hand,
it might be important to have a copyright. To do that, perhaps
it should be assigned to a "Common Lisp Users Group",
yet to be established. ISI would be happy to work with you on
developing the documents, to the extent that it is within our
competence to do so. We could certainly take care of
distribution, corrections, updates, etc., once the major writing
work was done.
Ron Ohlander
∂25-Mar-86 1005 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Documenting our decisions
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Date: Tue, 25 Mar 86 13:06 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Documenting our decisions
To: Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA, gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12193442413.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860325130615.7.GLS@THINK-KATHERINE.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1986 01:59 EST
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
...
Once the new spec document is ready, according to us, we could find a
way to do a mass printing of it -- we don't need to wait till ANSI and
ISO do their thing.
Well, there is $5000 sitting in an escrow account at Digital Press that
can be tapped for such a purpose if we only form a legal entity to
receive it.
If the Digital Press book were not the basis for the new standard
document, any second edition of that would be a private matter between
you and Digital Press. My thought was that an updated version of the
Digital Press book could appear just after the proposed standard is
finished. It would explictly point to the standard document as
definitive, but would try to describe the contents of that document in a
form more useful to the average Common Lisp user. The ANSI/ISO document
would be for implementors, language lawyers, and nit pickers.
If you really think that the ANSI document really would be so incredibly
turgid and opaque that people would rather read the silver book, then
perhaps a second edition would make sense. :-) However, I would rather
see a readable ANSI document plus a good tutorial.
-- Scott
--Guy
∂25-Mar-86 2149 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documenting our decisions
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 25 Mar 86 21:48:57 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 26 Mar 86 00:49:47-EST
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1986 00:49 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12193691828.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Guy Steele <gls@AQUINAS.THINK.COM>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documenting our decisions
In-reply-to: Msg of 25 Mar 1986 13:06-EST from Guy Steele <gls at THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Well, there is $5000 sitting in an escrow account at Digital Press that
can be tapped for such a purpose if we only form a legal entity to
receive it.
Hmmm... maybe we should create some little noop corporation after all,
to hold the copyright and to handle the cash. It might be useful in
other ways, too. I wonder if a nonprofit corportion that included (for
now) just the steering and technical committee members would be
feasible, and if it would further irritate the rest of the community.
Has anyone had experience in setting up minimal corporations? How hairy
does it get?
If you really think that the ANSI document really would be so incredibly
turgid and opaque that people would rather read the silver book, then
perhaps a second edition would make sense. :-) However, I would rather
see a readable ANSI document plus a good tutorial.
Well, we wouldn't make the ANSI document turgid on purpose, but whenever
a choice had to be made between standards-level clarity and user
friendliness, we would want to go with the former. Maybe such choices
wouldn't arise if we do it right. If you prefer not to work on a second
edition of the silver book and instead to spend the time helping to
polish parts of the ANSI document and/or working on a tutorial, that
would be fine. I suppose then Digital Press would have the right to
hire some random to update the silver book, which certainly has the
potential to confuse things. But probably they wouldn't bother.
-- Scott
∂26-Mar-86 0833 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU FYI
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 26 Mar 86 11:33:36-EST
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1986 11:33 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12193809028.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: FYI
Apparently my mail to the address below is now reaching Yuasa, with
about 1 day delay in most cases. I've tried to contact Ida, but haven't
heard from him yet. Let's see what we can learn about Common Lisp
politics in Japan, and then discuss what to do about technical committee
membership, etc. Yuasa and Hagiya are knowledgeable, energetic, and
speak pretty good English. Ida is mroe senior and seems to be running
various bureaucratic Common Lisp coordination functions over there. Ida
translated the silver book to Japanese. It may be that we'll want to
invite both Yuasa and Ida to join the technical committee, or just one,
or have them set up a committee over there to mirror what we are doing.
-- Scott
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wednesday, 26 March 1986 11:01-EST
From: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman>
To: nttlab!kurims!yuasa at SU-SHASTA.ARPA
cc: fahlman
Re: Common Lisp standardization
Dear Mr. Yuasa:
Now that we have established netmail contact, we would very much like to
get the input of you and Mr. Hagiya on the Common Lisp issues we have
been discussing. The first step, if you haven't done this already, is
to send mail to Dick Gabriel "RPG@SU-AI.ARPA" and ask him to add your
name to the Common Lisp mailing list. That is where all the discussions
take palce, and by sending mail to "Common-Lisp@SU-AI" you can respond
to anything you see there or raise your own questions and issues. If
your computer is able to forward messages on this list to others in
Japan, that would be useful, but at least you and Mr. Hagiya should be on
it. Of course, since most people on the list are in the U.S., all the
discussion is in English.
The technical committee that we announced for X3J13 is rather small
(only eight members so far), and this group will be preparing the new
Common Lisp standards document that we will propose for ANSI and ISO
approval. We expect to discuss all the issues on the public
Common-Lisp mailing list, so being on the technical committee is not
important for participating in the debate. The committee members will
vote on what goes into the document if there is not a clear consensus in
the larger community, but I expect this to be very rare. The main job
of the technical committee is to participate in creating the actual
specification document.
We will need to find out more about the situation in Japan before we can
decide how to proceed in adding Japanese menbers to the technical
committee. We may add just one person, who would be responsible for
collecting and representing the views of others in Japan. I'm not sure
whether this should be the person with the most Lisp experience, or if
it is important to choose someone with a high academic rank. We might
add more than one Japanese member to the committee, though we must be
careful not to let the committee get too large and slow-moving. Or
maybe there should be a Japanese committee that would correspond to the
U.S. committee, with close contacts between the two. But until we
decide what to do, we would very much like to get your participation
through the Common Lisp mailing list.
Aside from yourself, Mr. Hagiya, and Professor Ida, are there other
leaders in the Japanese Common Lisp community with whom we should be in
contact? Anything you could tell us about what sorts of Common Lisp
activities have been going on in Japan would be valuable.
Best regards,
Scott Fahlman
∂26-Mar-86 1009 RPG Document
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
I don't want people to get the impression that I'm pushing the
Lucid document. We had to prepare it for 2 reasons:
1. A tricky negotiation made it mandatory to include it as
a deliverable for a contract, even though we and others
tried to dissuade the party in question
2. We needed to have a non-generic Common Lisp reference manual.
Because of point 2, this document might not be suitable. Its format
might be nicer for our purposes - 1 function, macro, etc per page,
standard descriptive format. Possibly some clearer prose in places,
possibly worse prose in others. There are legal problems I need to
solve to allow the CL group to muck with the document while Lucid
can continue its rights to the original. I imagine forking the
document somehow, with Lucid keeping rights to the original, but not
to the CL-committee-derived work. I believe Lucid should have no
rights to the ANSI/ISO document.
The book is in Tex format. I have sent a copy to Fahlman to see whether he
believes it's suitable at all before sending it out further.
-rpg-
∂26-Mar-86 1427 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU [OHLANDER: Documenting our decisions]
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Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1986 17:27 EST
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: [OHLANDER: Documenting our decisions]
Forwarded at Ron's request...
Date: Wednesday, 26 March 1986 17:09-EST
From: OHLANDER at USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman
Re: Documenting our decisions
Scott,
I agree with your position on the number of people on the
technical committee. I don't want to propose that there be some
significant increase in numbers just to try to
ensure adequate representation for every potentially interested
party. I just wanted to offer a way of dealing with the
perception that some people might have regarding any potential
bias. Actually, I think that the solution that Steve
recently offered (regarding a vendors' reviewing group) is a
much better one than mine.
In regards to the copyright issue, if we have one, some official
body or person has to hold it. We may not have to get a copyright.
However, we have to make sure that there is only one official
public domain specification. Some one or some place has to be
the official repository and maitainer of this document. Otherwise,
why bother with validation and other such issues. A copyright
would achieve this purpose. The other possibility is to maintain
some stamp of approval that is conferred by having originated from
the officially approved maintainer of the document.
Ron
∂26-Mar-86 1500 Moon@ALLEGHENY.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Documenting our decisions
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Date: Mon, 24 Mar 86 17:56 EST
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Documenting our decisions
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12192630575.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860324175631.1.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I have not seen the Lucid manual either, but I know from my own
experience that a language reference manual for users and a formal,
unambiguous language specification are two very different things. In
other words, starting from the Lucid manual may not save a significant
amount of effort.
While TeX and Scribe are both widely available text formatters, and
there may be others, I would like to argue against using any text
formatter at all for the language specification. In this project we
need to concentrate on content, not on style of presentation. Wrestling
with a text formatter would simply be a distraction from our real
business.
But maybe it's better to back off from such implementation
considerations and first decide what it is we're trying to do. Do we
really have the resources within these committees to write a formal,
unambiguous language specification? Or should we be starting by
developing what amounts to an appendix to the Steele manual?
∂26-Mar-86 2026 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documenting our decisions
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Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1986 23:25 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12193938558.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documenting our decisions
In-reply-to: Msg of 24 Mar 1986 17:56-EST from David A. Moon <Moon at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
I'm not sure that a standard doc has to be very different from a manual,
if the manual is written with sufficient fanaticism. The Steele manual
has been serving us as a de facto spec for awhile now, and it has been
OK for that purpose, if not great. Almost all of the ambiguities are
due to failures on our part to think issues things through and to notice
problems, and not due to the style of presentation. It certainly would
make writing a spec easier if the online text of the Steele book were
available for cannibalization and not legally encumbered. The Lucid
book might serve us just as well in that capacity, except that its text
has not been debugged by the scrutiny of hundreds of users. We will
see.
I agree that we don't want to let text formatting become a big thing in
this effort, at least until the real work is done. But a well-formatted
document with section numbers and an index can be a big help as we go
along.
We obviously don't have the resources to write a formal, 100%
unambiguous language spec. As far as I know, there has never been such
a thing, even for languages much less complex than Lisp. But I think
that if we have a reasonably complete and correct manual to start from,
we'll be able to put together a langauge spec that has many fewer holes
than the original manual, which itself is pretty good except in areas
where all of us were confused or just gave up. Remember that the
original manual was written at a time when there was no implementation
experience with many parts of the language; now we've got the benefit of
some experience, and therefore a much better idea of what things can be
tied down and what things have to be left to implementors. And we
probably won't specify anything that's unimplementable this time.
We could try to write an add-on to the original book, but I think that
this would not be an acceptable form for the standard in the end, and
rewriting could introduce a bunch of new bugs. We're much more likely
to get it right if, at any given time, there's a complete manual
reflecting current truth.
The Europeans think that the best way to build an unambiguous spec is to
define a small kernel as precisely as possible, and then to specify the
rest of the language in terms of that -- by providing example code
implementing the rest of the langauge, I guess. That's a lot of work
too, and has its own set of problems: it's hard to specify just what
elements of the example code are meant to be essential and which can be
changed at the implementor's option. So unless all systems actually use
the example code, you get big problems. I think that a manual is at
least as likely to be unambiguous.
-- Scott
∂27-Mar-86 1946 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Documenting our decisions
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Date: Thu, 27 Mar 86 18:38 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Documenting our decisions
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12193938558.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860327183849.7.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I agree that the resulting text should be readable and sensible, and I
agree that we should not strive for a 100% unambiguous spec; we don't
want to end up with a Vienna Definition Language monster like the PL/I
definition. I also agree that we can do a lot better now than we did
last time, partly because we know more about what we're doing.
However, there's another major reason for ambiguities besides the ones
you mentioned: interactions between features. Yes, there are
declarations. Yes, there are FLET and MACROLET. Exactly how do the two
work together? This isn't the greatest example, but I'm sure you know
what I mean. I think that to clear up such problems, the manual will
have to get somewhat more rigorous, and it will probably be necessary to
introduce more terminology with strict definitions.
As was pointed out, the stricter it gets, the harder it is to make the
text flow smoothly and be easy to understand. But I agree that we need
to err on the side of clarity and unambiguity, and keep the writing as
clear as we can in light of that. There's no getting around the fact
that excellent technical writing is difficult.
You're right about the kernel definition. To put it another way, a spec
written that way would be extremely constrictive, since you'd have to
imitate every single aspect of the behavior of the example code,
including its behavior on bad inputs, etc. The Common Lisp spec
explicitly takes the attitude that it only specifies certain behavior,
and other things are termed "an error". Sure, things would be more
portable and unambiguous if we didn't take that attitude, but it has
been our feeling that implementations would be forced into unacceptable
inefficiencies and compromises by such a strict spec.
Of course, now that we know more about implementations, we could
reconsider some of the "is an error" cases, and consider defining them.
However, given our agenda and priorities, I don't know whether it's
worth spending time on that in any significant number of cases. We
could keep it in the backs of our minds, though.
∂27-Mar-86 1955 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA [yuasa: forwarded]
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Date: Thu, 27 Mar 86 18:53 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: [yuasa: forwarded]
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12193149846.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860327185339.9.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I concur with you about the various Japanese folks. The Japanese are
definitely status-conscious. I also found out when I was there that
they are age-conscious, and assume a strong monotonic depedency between
age and level of responsibility. (As a "high-ranking" Symbolics
technical person, I found out that they were surprised that I was
apparently only in my late thirties, and they were even more surprised
when they found out I was in my late twenties. From what I've read,
this is pretty standard.)
I should also point out that Prof. Ida has specifically been active in
getting Common Lisp established as a standard within JEIDA. It's hard
to explain what JEIDA is exactly, both because I don't know, and because
Japanese organizations and their roles do not map into American ones.
It's an industry organization. It's probably sort of like EIA or IEEE
in some ways, at least insofar as it's a forum for adoptation of
standards. In any case, the fact that Ida is involved in JEIDA is
probably another reason that it makes sense for him to be involved with
the Common Lisp standardization process.
Unfortunately, I don't know how much he really knows technically. It
would be very hard to justify his inclusion on the technical committee
on the basis of his deep knowledge of Lisp and Lisp implementation
issues, based on what I know. I could be wrong.
Here's a random idea: perhaps he really belongs on the steering
committee, and he could help us figure out who in Japan makes sense for
the technical committee?
∂27-Mar-86 2220 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU [yuasa: forwarded]
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 28 Mar 86 01:18:49-EST
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1986 01:18 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12194221400.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "Daniel L. Weinreb" <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: [yuasa: forwarded]
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 Mar 1986 18:53-EST from Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW at SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Unfortunately, I don't know how much he really knows technically. It
would be very hard to justify his inclusion on the technical committee
on the basis of his deep knowledge of Lisp and Lisp implementation
issues, based on what I know. I could be wrong.
Well, we don't necessarily have to apply exactly the same standards to
foreign members that we did to American members. But I share your lack
of knowledge about Ida's technical abilities, and his English is
certainly not good enough for him to help write the manual or choose the
wording. Then again, he may be the guy who ends up translating the
thing into Japanese.
Here's a random idea: perhaps he really belongs on the steering
committee, and he could help us figure out who in Japan makes sense for
the technical committee?
I thought about proposing that myself. He seems to enjoy hacking
bureaucracy. So far, two of the addresses I've tried for mail to Ida
have bounced, and the third has not yet produced a reply.
-- Scott
∂28-Mar-86 0808 GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA Ida
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Date: Fri 28 Mar 86 08:09:22-PST
From: Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA>
Subject: Ida
To: cl-steering%su-ai@HPLABS
Cc: GRISS%HP-HULK@HPLABS
I would be concerned with adding another person to the steering committee
at this point. I thing you would then also have to consider some
additions from the European communitee and so on, possible leading to
a rather large group.
I think we would do better to identify a serious technical person, or
a more senior person, such as Eichi Goto, who is extremely well known
in the LISP, Alabgra and AI communitee in Japan. Goto has been
involved with numerous LISP implementations, both software and
hardware.
I will dig around for some of the articles I have, maybe can find some
new names.
M
-------
∂28-Mar-86 0948 RPG New Members
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
I agree with Griss and the others who recommended more senior
Japanese members. I met with the KCL folks last year and found
that their understanding of Lisp was surprisingly shallow for
implementors. They seemed quite capable of hacking extraordinary
things together, but lacked the judgement to decide among various
interpretations of Silver-book statements by relying on taste and
a feeling for Lisp. I don't believe that at the point I met with
them they had developed a consistent mental model of Common Lisp.
-rpg-
∂28-Mar-86 1008 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: [yuasa: forwarded]
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Date: 28 Mar 1986 09:03-PST
Sender: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: Re: [yuasa: forwarded]
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA]28-Mar-86 09:03:51.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12194221400.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Perhaps the best place for Ida is on the ISO committee. I think
that the Japanese might regard this as an honorable position. It
would also offer the opportunity to interract with the technical
committee.
Ron
∂28-Mar-86 1255 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU New Members
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Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1986 15:54 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12194380895.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: New Members
In-reply-to: Msg of 28 Mar 1986 12:48-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
OK, I can see the wisdom of considering Yuasa and Hagiya as too junior
to the the official Japanese reps, if there are to be only one or two.
Maybe even Ida is too junior -- he's young and an associate professor, I
think. The problem with taking on Goto or someone more senior is that
we want to make sure that whoever we get has some serious interest in
Common Lisp and the standardization thereof. We don't need some
VIP who thinks that Lisp is a cute toy and not very practical.
I think that the KCL guys have a lot of enthusism and energy that we
want to tap, and also good contacts over there. So we want to keep them
involved and feeling good about all this, even if they're not the
official Japanese representatives.
The model I keep coming back to in my mind is trying to get the Japanese
to set up their own committee over there, with much communication with
ours, and that we all come together at ISO. That way N Japanese can get
into the act and they can sort out their own politics.
-- Scott
∂28-Mar-86 2041 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Ida
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Date: Fri, 28 Mar 86 20:09 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Ida
To: GRISS%HP-HULK@HPLABSD.ARPA, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 28 Mar 86 11:09-EST from Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860328200946.8.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I agree about finding a more senior person. I also agree with RPG about
Hagiya and Yuasa; I like them and am impressed by their accomplishments,
but their misunderstandings of the manual in a few placed clearly
indicated to me that while they certainly could implement from a spec,
they didn't have a good idea why the spec was the way it was.
On the other hand, let's be quite careful about the kind of person we
choose: it has to be someone who appreciates what it means to write a
substantial program in Lisp, not just someone who has implemented a Lisp
of some sort. I am afraid of choosing someone who is too much of a
theoretist, who would not have the sensitivity to make a good
engineering compromise between elegance and practicality. We should
keep this in mind, and be careful that we know enough about someone
before we put him on the committee that we can be confident he can
work in that kind of engineering milieu.
∂28-Mar-86 2157 JMC Japanese representative
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Japanese support for a Common Lisp standard would be valuable. My
suggestion is that members of the committee discuss with some senior
Japanese, who is himself not a candidate, what kind of person is
desirable and be substantially influenced by the advice obtained.
∂29-Mar-86 0806 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japanese representative
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sat 29 Mar 86 11:07:27-EST
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1986 11:07 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12194590697.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japanese representative
In-reply-to: Msg of 29 Mar 1986 00:57-EST from John McCarthy <JMC at SU-AI.ARPA>
That sounds like a good idea. Do you have any such high-level contacts
in Japan? I could probably get some names from Herb Simon and others
around here, but having a personal contact would probably be best.
-- Scott
∂29-Mar-86 0809 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Random note
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Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1986 11:10 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12194591209.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Random note
I'll be out of the country from April 1 - 9, so don't wait around for my
input if decisions have to be made. I've got about two weeks of
intensive work to do when I get back, but I'm hoping we can really get
rolling on technical issues starting in May.
-- Scott
∂29-Mar-86 0828 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA New Members
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Date: Sat, 29 Mar 86 11:27 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: New Members
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12194380895.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860329112735.3.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
From what I've learned about the Japanese, I think it's safe to say that
none of us have any hope of having a good understanding of their
internal politics, questions of what's appropriate, who would be
insulted by what, and so on. Fahlman's suggestion re their own
committee, or McCarthy's of consulting with someone there, both sound
reasonable to me, and certainly better than our making a direct choice
of an individual ourselves.
∂01-Apr-86 0735 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Docmenting the decisions
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Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1986 10:36 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12195371441.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Docmenting the decisions
I have now received a hrdcopy of the Lucid manual, and it looks like a
good starting point for the ANSI document, assuming that RPG's lawyers
can work out a release on the rights that will still retain for Lucid
the right to use their own work. The book is organized as a chunk of
introductory text on each chapter, followed by alphabetical listings of
functions and variables in that section, one per page.
We would have to remove a modest amount of Lucid-specific stuff, and put
in a fair amount of work to indicate the range of permissible variation
on some issues -- Lucid's book just says what their Lisp does. Some of
the introductory sections will have to be beefed up a bit, and the right
to incorporate some excepts from Steele's book would be valuable here.
A lot of these things Guy got just right.
Let me propose that the following thigns take place int he next 10 days
while I'm out of town:
1. Bob Mathis will communicate with the ANSI and ISO people and find out
whether the following kinds of status for a spec document are
acceptable to them:
(a) A public-domain document. Anyone would be able to print this and we
couldn't use legal means to prevent them from modifying it. But if the
copy came from us or from ANSI, people would know it is definitive. I
favor this option if we can do it this way -- gets the lawyers out of
the loop for good.
(b) A document copyrighted by a small non-profit corporation set up
specifically for this purpose (e.g. The Common Lisp Ad Hoc Technical
Committee, Inc.). We would prefer not to assign the copyright to ANSI,
but would of course grant to ANSI and to the rest of the community
blanket permission to reproduce the document without making hidden
modifications. Blanket permission would also be given for incorporating
the document into online documentation.
(c) Some other scheme of their choice.
2. RPG will continue his efforts to find a way to release the version
modified by the technical committee into the public domain (or to
assign the copyright to this new organization), while retaining for
Lucid the rights they need.
3. Steele will ask Digital Press if they are willing to grant permission
for this document to incorporate substantial excerpts from the Digital
Press book (but less than 30% of it), given that the result is to be
handled as 1a or 1b.
Suitable acknowledgement would of course be given to the contribution of
Lucid and Digital Press. I don't think the other companies cna object
to that, though if the document is public domain they could quietly
leave this off in their own copies. We would encourage other companies
not to do this, however.
Once all this is settled, I'm willing to collect the files at CMU and
start to roll on this. It seems reasonable to me that we set a goal of
September 1 for having a document with the backlog of small problems
cleaned up, and that we try to settle everything else and get a document
to ANSI by Dec 31, 1986. But we need to discuss this schedule further.
Someone on the steering committee needs to take charge of this business
of collecting the names of all participating companies. We may also
want to hold elections soon within the committess, as we'll have to tell
ANSI what our sturcutre is.
-- Scott
∂01-Apr-86 1358 ALAN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Docmenting the decisions
Received: from MC.LCS.MIT.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 1 Apr 86 13:57:56 PST
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 86 17:00:02 EST
From: Alan Bawden <ALAN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Docmenting the decisions
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-reply-to: Msg of Tue 1 Apr 1986 10:36 EST from Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman at C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].868790.860401.ALAN>
Before anyone makes any decisions about starting with Lucid's book, perhaps
we should all have a look at it?
∂03-Apr-86 1412 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Documenting...
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 3 Apr 86 14:11:30 PST
Date: 3 Apr 1986 14:11-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Documenting...
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA] 3-Apr-86 14:11:16.MATHIS>
This message is in response to previous messages on the topics of
"Getting things rolling" and "Documenting our decisions"; I raise
three points -- a trip to Paris on May 5 to meet with the EU←LISP
Committee, some information on copyrights and ANSI standards, and
what is the central essence of Common Lisp?
Committee organization -- I think I was drafted to do the
organizational and administrative work associated with the
steering committee. I'll keep doing that. As to a formal
meeting; I don't think one is necessary yet.
I will send out a message requesting (again) the identification
of people and companies participating in this process. This will
probably need to be done two or three more times before the end
of 1986.
As to ARPA net access; there are some possibilities that people
on the Source or CompUServe or MCI-Mail may be able to
communicate with ARPA net mail in ways similar to USE net or
CSnet. ARPA net access may only be a temporary problem and as
such Steph Squires seemed willing to help with any real needs.
I will probably attend the May 5 meeting of the EU←LISP committee
in Paris. On administrative and standards issues, I feel
prepared; on technical issues, I need some guidance. I talked to
Chailloux this morning and I expect to have a couple of other
discussions before the trip. He always seems reasonable and
willing to talk.
What is the central essence of Common Lisp? If I had a better
understanding of this, I think I could understand the European
"levels" approach better. There is more to it than just the name
given to a particular function or how a particular function is
specified or how it is implemented or made available to a user.
Those kinds of things can be worked out. More difficult are
fundamental things (for example, how scopes are handled). Is
there a list of what the fundamental concepts or approaches are?
This is also linked to the question of validation. What does it
take to be considered a Common Lisp implementation? Is there a
minimal acceptable level?
Are there other things I should consider in meeting with the
EU←LISP group? Does anyone else want to go?
Another issue that has been raised is the copyright and
availability of the final standard. In general ANSI holds the
copyright to their standards. They also want to encourage the
use of their standards and don't want copyright problems to stand
in the way. When something is in the public domain, there is no
control over its use. I think what we are really interested in
is a pre-arranged, royalty-free permission to use.
I talked to Cathy Kachurik of X3 about this copyright situation.
She has already contacted Digital Press and they seem willing to
turn over the right to produce a derived work. That would free
us to use as much or as little from the Steele book as is now
thought appropriate.
We should begin to make a list of the kinds of things we want
people to be able to do with the standard -- provide machine
readable copies with a language processor, incorporate it into
automatic documentation or help systems, reprint sections in
manuals or text books, and so forth. I think it is best that we
come up with such a list and then build it into the overall plan
of work for X3J13. We will also have to arrange for distribution
of any versions other than the ANSI printed one. ISI may be the
best for the "standard" one and CMU for "enhanced or modified or
working" versions.
-- Bob Mathis
∂03-Apr-86 1727 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: Documenting...
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Date: 3 Apr 1986 17:27-PST
Sender: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: Re: Documenting...
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA] 3-Apr-86 17:27:08.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA] 3-Apr-86 14:11:16.MATHIS>
In regards to Arpanet access, ISI is working on a commercial mail
system that will allow access to the Arpanet through commercial
systems such as MCI-mail, Telemail, etc. We already have a
prototype working with quite a few users, including a number of
people from IEEE executive and steering committees. We
expect the final system to be ready within the next 3 months.
Ron Ohlander
∂04-Apr-86 0820 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Documenting...
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Date: Fri, 4 Apr 86 11:20 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Documenting...
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA] 3-Apr-86 14:11:16.MATHIS>
Message-Id: <860404112031.3.GLS@THINK-KATHERINE.ARPA>
Date: 3 Apr 1986 14:11-PST
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
...
Another issue that has been raised is the copyright and
availability of the final standard. In general ANSI holds the
copyright to their standards. They also want to encourage the
use of their standards and don't want copyright problems to stand
in the way. When something is in the public domain, there is no
control over its use. I think what we are really interested in
is a pre-arranged, royalty-free permission to use.
I talked to Cathy Kachurik of X3 about this copyright situation.
She has already contacted Digital Press and they seem willing to
turn over the right to produce a derived work. That would free
us to use as much or as little from the Steele book as is now
thought appropriate. ...
I have just spoken with John Osborn of Digital Press on this subject.
He was apparently concerned about whether I was concerned about it--in
other words, the usual problem of obtaining N-person consensus using
only 2-person communications links. I assured him that I wanted the
ANSI committee to be able to use the contents of CLtL unimpeded. He
said that Digital Press is agreeable to an arrangement whereby ANSI
receives permission royalty-free to use any or all contents of CLtL for
the purposes of developing a Common Lisp standard (while Digital Press
retains the right to publish present and future editions of the existing
book). He said Digital Press is still making piles of money on CLtL and
would like to continue to do so, and suggested that future editions
might be more "personal" or "tutorial" or whatever. I pointed out that
that was reasonable, but also that I would likely be involved in the
ANSI effort as well. (I still have some concerns about potential
confusion over which book is the official Common Lisp; if CLtL continues
into future editions, I think it must change its character so as not to
be confusable with the ANSI standard.)
Apparently other parts of DEC (Gary Brown's name was mentioned) are
putting mild pressure on Digital Press to cooperate with ANSI, so maybe
it will all go smoothly after all.
If Lucid is still willing to make its text available, then the committee
will have some useful choices about which text to draw on for what
purposes. (I too would like to see the text, by the way, Dick.)
--Guy
P.S. Lucid's document uses TeX, and I am in process of converting CLtL
from SCRIBE to TeX, so maybe the committee will want to work with TeX
files. I have some nifty macros: all you need to say is
\begin{defun}
complex realpart &optional imagpart
The arguments must be non-complex numbers...
\end{defun}
and the function description headers are formatted (fonts and line
breaks) automatically. There are similar facilities for macros, etc.
--Q
∂10-Apr-86 2008 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documenting...
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 10 Apr 86 23:09:21-EST
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1986 23:09 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12197867848.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documenting...
In-reply-to: Msg of 4 Apr 1986 11:20-EST from System Files <SYS at SU-AI.ARPA>
I have just spoken with John Osborn of Digital Press on this subject.
...
He said that Digital Press is agreeable to an arrangement whereby ANSI
receives permission royalty-free to use any or all contents of CLtL for
the purposes of developing a Common Lisp standard (while Digital Press
retains the right to publish present and future editions of the existing
book).
This is great news. We will want to go over the current manual very
carefully, and maybe change its format, on the way to a standard, but
the ability to use chunks of the Digital Press text verbatim along with
parts of the Lucid version will save a lot of work.
(I still have some concerns about potential
confusion over which book is the official Common Lisp; if CLtL continues
into future editions, I think it must change its character so as not to
be confusable with the ANSI standard.)
I don't think that this will be a problem. All future Digital Press
editions should explicitly state that the ANSI standard, once adopted,
is definitive, and the ANSI version should have eagles and other
Official Looking Stuff on the cover.
-- Scott
∂18-Apr-86 1922 squires@ipto.ARPA Japanese representative
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Date: Fri 18 Apr 86 22:23:22-EST
From: Stephen Squires <SQUIRES@IPTO.ARPA>
Subject: Japanese representative
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-Id: <VAX-MM(187)+TOPSLIB(118) 18-Apr-86 22:23:22.IPTO.ARPA>
About a year ago Bob Balzer introduced me to a prominate member of the
Japanese computer science community (Kouichi) at an international program
committee meeting.
I asked Balzer to contact him and ask him to suggest a candidate for
the technical committee. We need to get more specfics about this candidate.
I have asked Balzer to tell me what he knows. The following messages
embody what has happened to date:
Friday, April 18, 1986 22:14:29-EST
339 18-Apr BALZER@ISI-VAXA Suggested Japanese representative (1149 chars)
Message 339 -- ************************
18-Apr-86 20:21:27-EST,1149;000000000000
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Date: 18 Apr 1986 1717-PST (Friday)
To: SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA
From: BALZER@ISI-VAXA.ARPA
Subject: Suggested Japanese representative for Common Lisp
-------------- Begin Forwarded Message --------------
TO: BALZER@ISI-VAXA
FROM: PACRAIG@USC-ISIB
SENDER: PACRAIG@USC-ISIB
SUBJECT: Kouichi called....
RECEIVED: 4/18/86 15:13:45
SENT: 4/18/86 15:03:00
MESSAGE-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA]18-Apr-86 15:03:51.PACRAIG>
TO: Balzer@ISI-VAXA.ARPA
FROM: Patti Craig <PACraig@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
SENDER: PACRAIG@USC-ISIB.ARPA
RECEIVED: from USC-ISIB.ARPA by isi-vaxa.ARPA (4.12/4.7)
RETURN-PATH: <PACRAIG@USC-ISIB.ARPA> id AA09323; Fri, 18 Apr 86 15:05:56 pst
Following is the reference/name you wanted:
Masayuki Ida
Computer Science Laboratory
Aoyama Gakuin University
1626 Ono, Atugi City
Kanagawa 234-01
Japan
Phone: 462-48-1221, ext. 4526
Electronic Mail: IDA%utokyo-relay.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
-------
∂18-Apr-86 1925 squires@ipto.ARPA Re: Suggested Japanese representative for Common Lisp
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id AA18306; Fri, 18 Apr 86 22:26:31 est
Date: Fri 18 Apr 86 22:26:26-EST
From: Stephen Squires <SQUIRES@IPTO.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Suggested Japanese representative for Common Lisp
To: BALZER@ISI-VAXA.ARPA
Cc: SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA, SQUIRES@IPTO.ARPA
Message-Id: <VAX-MM(187)+TOPSLIB(118) 18-Apr-86 22:26:26.IPTO.ARPA>
In-Reply-To: Message from "BALZER@ISI-VAXA.ARPA" of 18 Apr 1986 1717-PST (Friday)
Thanks for the reference. What do you know about person suggested? The
steering group has estabished some guidelines for membership. How do
could the steering committee get the additional specifics that they
need to know?
-------
∂19-Apr-86 1404 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japanese representative
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sat 19 Apr 86 17:03:46-EST
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1986 17:03 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12200160588.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Stephen Squires <SQUIRES@IPTO.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japanese representative
Steve,
Masayuki Ida is in fact the person we have been discussing as the most
likely Japanese candidate all along, but it's nice to know that Koiuchi
also feels that he's the obvious guy. Our major reservation was that he
might be too junior, so selecting him might be viewed as some sort of
insult.
Ida is the guy who translated Steeele's book into Japanese, and he has
been working on various Common Lisp standardization efforts over there,
including proposals for a subset and for an extension to Kanji
characters and strings. Apparently the focus of Common Lisp activity
over there is a committee within JEIDA (Japanese Electronics Industry
Development Association), which has been running for about a year with
Ida as the chairman.
Ida was recently promoted to associate professor at Aoyama Gakuin
University -- I'm not sure where that university is in the fairly
well-defined Japanese pecking order. He speaks adequate English for
communication, though he's not very fluent -- see his recent note to the
Common Lisp mailing list. He now seems to be able to send and recieve
netmail via CSnet with about a half-day latency.
Let me propose the following model, which we can bounce off of the
various senior Japanese contacts that we have to see what they think
about it:
1. Any individual in Japan who has a stable netmail connection to the
U.S. and an interest in the standardization of Common Lisp is encouraged
to join the Common Lisp mailing list and to participate in the
discussions. (Apparently a rebroadcast point is being established at
NTT, so that one message can be sent there and can be forwarded to
everyone on JUNET. However, Ida prefers to get direct mail via CSNET to
U-Tokyo.)
2. The committee within JEIDA should continue to be the focus for
Japanese Common Lisp activities. In the future, we will attempt to stay
in much closer contact with this group via netmail.
3. Though any number of Japanese researchers can participate in our
design discussions via the Common Lisp mailing list, we invite the JEIDA
committee to elect one representative to sit on our technical committee,
and one person (it may be the same person) to sit on our steering
committee for the purposes of formal liaison between the two groups.
The choice is up to them. (I wouldn't be surprised if Ida were
selected.)
If we agree that this is a reasonable model, the next step would be for
people who know the leading CS people in Japan to solicit their opinion
of this. It has the advantage that we're not telling them who to nominate,
so we don't have to weigh seniority against interest and knowledge; the
disadvantage is that we might get someone inappropriate from our point
of view, but I think it unlikely that any of these people will poison
the process.
-- Scott
∂20-Apr-86 0838 GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA Japanese Representative
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Date: Sun 20 Apr 86 08:23:51-PST
From: Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA>
Subject: Japanese Representative
To: cl-steering@su-ai.ARPA
Cc: GRISS%HP-HULK@HPLABS
I like Scott's proposal. I would be prepared to discuss it with E.
Goto fo
∂20-Apr-86 0900 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japanese Representative
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sun 20 Apr 86 12:02:33-EST
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1986 12:02 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12200367902.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK@HPLABS.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japanese Representative
In-reply-to: Msg of 20 Apr 1986 11:23-EST from Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK at hplabs.ARPA>
Martin,
Your message got truncated, but I believe that you were offering to
discuss the proposal for Japanese participation with Goto. If nobody
within our steering/technical committee objects to the proposal in the
next couple of days, then I think it would be very useful for you to
sound out Goto on this.
One concern I have is whether the JEIDA committee is viewed by people
like Goto as the legitimate body to represent the Japanese Common Lisp
community. I have no reason to believe it is not, but we don't want to
inadvertently take sides in some power struggle over there by throwing
our weight behind Ida's committee. It couldn't hurt to ask.
Thanks for offering to follow up on this.
-- Scott
∂20-Apr-86 1001 RPG Chairman
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
I think it is time that we nominate a chairman of the Steering
committee. Because Bob Mathis knows all the proper steps to take,
because he has done this sort of thing before, and because he has
the international connections to pull it all off, I think we should
elect him our chairman.
-rpg-
∂20-Apr-86 1231 GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA Re: Chairman
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Date: Sun 20 Apr 86 12:26:13-PST
From: Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Chairman
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: GRISS%HP-HULK@HPLABS
In-Reply-To: Message from "Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>" of Sun 20 Apr 86 10:01:00-PST
Return-Path: <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
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Date: 20 Apr 86 1001 PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Chairman
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
I think it is time that we nominate a chairman of the Steering
committee. Because Bob Mathis knows all the proper steps to take,
because he has done this sort of thing before, and because he has
the international connections to pull it all off, I think we should
elect him our chairman.
-rpg-
I agree
mlg
-------
∂20-Apr-86 1256 GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA Japanese Representative
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Date: Sun 20 Apr 86 08:23:51-PST
From: Martin <GRISS%HP-HULK@hplabs.ARPA>
Subject: Japanese Representative
To: cl-steering@su-ai.ARPA
Cc: GRISS%HP-HULK@HPLABS
I like Scott's proposal. I would be prepared to discuss it with E.
Goto for his feedback.
M
-------
∂21-Apr-86 0844 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA message from/re Ida
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Apr 86 08:44:08 PST
Date: 21 Apr 1986 08:46-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: message from/re Ida
Subject: [Masayuki Ida <tansei!a37078%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY...]
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]21-Apr-86 08:46:29.MATHIS>
Here is a message I received from Masayuki Ida last week. I
think it was partially in response to my separate ISO work to
generate international participation. The Professor Ikuo Nakata
that he mentions is the head of the Japanese delegation to
ISO/TC97/SC22 (the immediate group under which our ISO working
group would operate). Nakata's recommendation means that we
should find a place for Ida. There may be other appropriate
Japanese too (I think this is the point of Fahlman's message on
20 April).
-- Bob
Begin forwarded message
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from utokyo-relay by csnet-relay.csnet id ak10810; 15 Apr 86 11:33 EST
by u-tokyo.junet (4.12/4.9J-1[JUNET-CSNET])
id AA06290; Tue, 15 Apr 86 19:40:40+0900
by tansei.u-tokyo.junet (4.12/4.9J)
id AA10384; Fri, 11 Apr 86 18:31:07+0900
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 86 18:31:07+0900
From: Masayuki Ida <tansei!a37078%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
To: ida@utokyo-relay.CSNET, mathis%usc-isif.arpa@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Subject: I am the chair of the Common Lisp committee of Japan
Return-Path: <tansei!a37078%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Message-ID: <8604110931.AA10384@tansei.u-tokyo.junet>
Dear Dr. Bob Mathis;
It is the first letter to you.
Let me introduce myself. I am charing the common Lisp committee japan.
This committee was established on April 1985 under Japan Electronic
Industries Developement Association (JEIDA).
We 24 corporate members including US company, such as Symbolics, xerox,
Digital(DEC), univac, data general, and so on.
I have presented the existance of the committee at IJCAI'85 press conference
by myself.
As I am the translator of CLtL into japanese, gls knows me very well.
please refer him for my qualifications.
I have informed that you will organizing a committee X3J13 and a ISO one.
I got a message from several persons including Guy Steele, F.Kunze,
D. Bobrow when I met them at their room each.
They suggested me to attend the ANSI committee or ISO committee if possible.
I want to present the status of japan as to Common Lisp, and
I want to have a communication with you.
I have a plan to make a subset standard.
Private proposal was appeared at October meeting, and currently
working group for the subset is working with my private proposal.
I also have a proposal for japanese character representation.
It will conform with the AT&T UNIX standard for japanese character representation.
I already got a opinion of symbolics, xerox digital or other company.
TI asked their japanese representative to send my proposal to them.
The above two activities were already reported to several persons via UUCP network.
Fortunatelly, from April 6th 1986, My computer center was joined to CSNET.
So, communication with US persons will be much easier and will be much more firm.
Prof. Nakata of Tukuba university, who is the member of ISO SC22, asked me
to attend ISO lisp committee if the things will be going.
I wrtoe too much things on the first letter.
Please forgive me to send this suddden letter to you.
If you have an interest to me and my activity,
please send a mail to me. I will send a documents to you after I receive
your mail.
Thanks for reading this miss-spell-full letter.
Masayuki Ida
phD, Associate professor
Aoyama Gakuin University
Atsugi, Morinosato Aoyama 1-1
Kanagawa, Japan 243-01
tel: +81 462 48 1221 ext 4526
or home: +81 462 33 4004
csnet/arpanet ida%utokyo-relay.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
uucp ...hplabs!kddlab!titcca!ccut!ida
...Shasta!nttlab!ccut!ida
--------------------
End forwarded message
∂21-Apr-86 0908 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Chairman
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Date: 21 Apr 86 08:59 PST
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Chairman
In-reply-to: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>'s message of 20 Apr 86 10:01
PST
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860421-090316-1457@Xerox>
I support both nominations whole-heartedly.
Thany you Scott and Bob.
danny
∂21-Apr-86 1025 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Re: Chairman
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Apr 86 10:25:16 PST
Date: 21 Apr 1986 10:27-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Re: Chairman
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]21-Apr-86 10:27:19.MATHIS>
In-Reply-To: The message of 20 Apr 86 1001 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
I am willing to serve as Chairman. I don't understand rowing
very much, but I get the impression that the rowers do most of
the work and the coxswain has a role in coordination and timing.
That is somewhat of how I understand my chairmanship -- I am
depending on the real Lisp experts to do a lot of the work to
make sure we keep on the right course.
If we are moving to vote on something we need a balloting
process. My next message to cl-steering will be a balloting
message. To vote, reply to that message. We should also set a
normal timing for ballots -- say at least a week and closing on
Tuesday night (that would take care of end-of-week, weekend, and
first-of-week types to all have a chance to see the ballot
message and respond. A ballot message should not have general
discussion, only information about the vote.
-- Bob
∂21-Apr-86 1102 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Apr 86 11:01:32 PST
Date: 21 Apr 1986 11:02-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]21-Apr-86 11:02:12.MATHIS>
Should Bob Mathis be elected Chairman of the Steering Committee?
Please reply by Tuesday 29 April.
(a sufficient answer should be just a "reply" to this message
which will show the subject and then just your yes or no. As the
issues get more complicated there may need to be additional text,
but we should try to keep the balloting process simple.)
∂21-Apr-86 1108 RPG Should Mathis ...
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Yes.
-rpg-
∂21-Apr-86 1151 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 21 Apr 86 14:53:53-EST
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1986 14:53 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12200661231.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
In-reply-to: Msg of 21 Apr 1986 14:02-EST from MATHIS at USC-ISIF.ARPA
(I don't think that technical committee members should vote on this, but
in case people feel they should...)
Yes.
-- Scott
∂21-Apr-86 1754 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Mathis as Chairman
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Date: 21 Apr 1986 17:52-PST
Sender: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: Mathis as Chairman
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA]21-Apr-86 17:52:30.OHLANDER>
I concur that Bob Mathis would be the appropriate chairman.
Ron Ohlander
∂21-Apr-86 1913 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
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Date: 21 Apr 86 19:13 PST
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
In-reply-to: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA's message of 21 Apr 86 11:02 PST
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860421-191415-2221@Xerox>
yes
∂22-Apr-86 0540 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA EuLisp
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Apr 86 05:39:59 PST
Date: 22 Apr 1986 05:42-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: EuLisp
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]22-Apr-86 05:42:20.MATHIS>
I had planned to go to the EuLisp meeting in Paris on May 5, but
it has just been changed to Erlangen, Germany, on May 2. So I
will not be going. I just talked to Jerome Chailloux. They
intend to finish their first draft at that meeting and distribute
it on the Common Lisp electronic mailing list. Their next
meeting will probably be June 2 in Bath England. I will try to
go to that one. (Just like everybody, I need 3-4 weeks planning
lead time.) Their August meeting will be in Boston at the same
time as the Lisp Conference. We should probably plan some
information on Common Lisp standardization activities for that
conference. What's appropriate?
-- Bob
∂22-Apr-86 0732 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Lisp conference
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Date: Tue, 22 Apr 86 10:30 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Lisp conference
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]22-Apr-86 05:42:20.MATHIS>
Message-ID: <860422103049.3.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 22 Apr 1986 05:42-PST
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Their August meeting will be in Boston at the same
time as the Lisp Conference. We should probably plan some
information on Common Lisp standardization activities for that
conference. What's appropriate?
In my opinion, the most important thing would be an announcement to the
attendees of the current state of things. We should announce the
existence and member of the technical and steering committees, and give
a brief agenda for each of them. We should explain what's going on with
ANSI and ISO, and what's going on regarding the formal definition of the
standard. We should also clear the air by announcing the official state
of standardization of extensions, such as the error/condition system,
object-oriented programming, and window systems. (By "we" I'm not
necessarily including myself, since I'm not personally on the
committees, but that's not important.) Presumably the conference
chairman should figure out how to best fit this into the format of the
conference.
By the way, you might be interested to know that the program committee
for the conference accepted a paper entitled "Desiderata for the
standardization of Lisp", by 13 European authors, headed by Julian
Padgett of Bath and including Chailloux. It attempts to present the
situation up to now, present some conclusions about how to proceed, and
their present progress to date, of which there is little, as they
readily admit. One of their conclusions is that there should be several
levels of standard, each a proper subset of the one above. It's clear
that they are trying to live with Common Lisp rather than fight it; the
tone is pretty reasonable and I don't see any problems coming from this.
∂22-Apr-86 0745 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Lisp conference
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 22 Apr 86 10:48:22-EST
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1986 10:48 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12200878681.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Lisp conference
In-reply-to: Msg of Tue 22 Apr 86 10:30 EST from Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW at SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
I think that Dan Weinreb's message covered the essential points of what
needs to happen at the Lisp Conference, except that I would add the need
for a question/answer session with as many members of the technical and
steering committees as we can conveniently round up. Perhaps the right
format is a 90 minute session with half an hour of status reports and an
hour of open discussion.
My guess is that this will be very heavily attended, so we'll need the
largest available room. I doubt that any slots are left on the official
program, so this may have to be an evening add-on of some sort. I
beleive that some of us are on the program committee for the meeting, so
maybe those people could make known our desire for a time slot of some
sort.
-- Scott
∂22-Apr-86 0841 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU EuLisp
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Apr 86 08:41:24 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 22 Apr 86 11:43:52-EST
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1986 11:43 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12200888762.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: EuLisp
In-reply-to: Msg of 22 Apr 1986 08:42-EST from MATHIS at USC-ISIF.ARPA
I note that some cracks seem to be developing within the Eulisp group,
and that they are nearing the point where the differences in goals
between the formalists and the hackers will begin to manifest themselves
in major technical disagreements. It looks like the move of the May
meeting to Erlangen was the only way to keep Stoyan on board. It will
be interesting to see if the June meeting comes off, and whether they
are still working smoothly together by then.
With respect to Eulisp and the Eulisp people, I think that the following
points should be raised with them fairly soon. It is best to approach
this though Chailloux, as he seems to be more interested in Common Lisp
than the Padgett and Fitch.
1. We have told them this before, but we should reiterate our view that
it is necessary to standardize something reasonably close to the current
Common Lisp under ANSI and, if possible, under ISO. By "reasonably
close", I mean that we must recognize that many Common Lisp
implementations and a growing body of user code and training materials
exist already or are in preparation, so in the definition of the
standard we must not make any incompatible changes unless the benefits
very clearly outweigh the costs. In this process, we do not feel that
we are free to start from scratch and reconsider all of the old
decisions. We certainly do not view the current Common Lisp as perfect,
but it has attained the status of a de facto standard in the U.S. and
many other parts of the world, and orderly progress demands that we make
this standard explicit and official and that we clean up the current
ambiguities as best we can.
2. It is our intention to develop a cleaned-up language specification
for the full language, and submit this to ANSI and then to ISO as a
proposed standard for ANSI/ISO Common Lisp. We do not view this as
casting the Common Lisp spec in stone forever, nor do we wish to
preclude the emergence of an ISO standrd for some different Lisp or for
an official Common Lisp subset or set of "layers". But for all of us,
the first priority is developing a usable standard for the full
language, and we do not currently view a layered approach or a
definition using formal semantics as the quickest or best way to attain
that goal.
3. We recognize that some members of the Eulisp group want to develop a
"post-Common" Lisp that would be different in many ways from the
currently defined language. Others appear to want a mulitple-level
specification, with the most complex level corresponding closely to to
the current Common Lisp and with the lower levels being subsets. The
simplest levels may be definable by formal mathematical methods. We
respect these goals and wish you well, but we hope that such activities
will not preclude an ISO standard for something close to the current
Common Lisp with a specification that discusses only the full language.
4. If the Eulisp group or any individual members wish to contribute to
the standardization effort outlined in points 1 and 2 (even while
pursuing your own activities as discussed in point 3) we would welcome
such participation, either through the open discussions on the Common
Lisp mailing list, or perhaps by adding a Eulisp person to our technical
and/or steering committees. We would like to discuss this committee
membership if there is serious interest.
5. If you feel that you cannot subscribe to our goals and plans, we
understand, and wish you well. Even if we disagree on the best form for
a standard, we hope that the gorups can remain in close contact and can
learn from each other's efforts.
-- Scott
∂22-Apr-86 1335 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA EuLisp
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Date: Tue, 22 Apr 86 15:42 EST
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: EuLisp
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
cc: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12200888762.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860422154223.8.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Well said. I agree with you. (Oh, that's right, I'm not on the steering committee).
∂22-Apr-86 2134 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Specification Document
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Apr 86 21:14:50 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 23 Apr 86 00:17:26-EST
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1986 00:17 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12201025953.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Specification Document
We need to keep moving on getting a document together, if indeed that is
going to be the central focus of our effort.
Several people on the technical committee have expressed a desire to get
a copy of the Lucid document so that we can all discuss what mixture of
materials we want to use. Dick, is it possible to send copies to
everyone on the technical committee? Presumably everyone has a copy of
CLtL, which is the other likely source of material.
It would certainly be simplest all around to develop a public-domain
document, but I see several problems with this. First, Bob Mathis says
that ANSI likes to copyright their standards documents. Second, Digital
Press might be more willing to grant ANSI permission to create a
derivitive work incorporating material from CLtL than to drop a lot of
material into the public domain. Third, once the work is in the public
domain, nobody has any control over it at all, and a confusing array of
mutant versions could appear.
Let me propose the following model to see if it sounds good to all of us
and, if so, whether we can sell it to ANSI, Digital Press, and Lucid's
hairy lawyers.
The standards document that we develop for Common Lisp would contain the
following copyright notice (language subject to tuning if we can get
some legal advice):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 1986, 1987 American National Standards Institute
[[ Is that what ANSI stands for or did I guess wrong? ]]
Permission is hereby granted for any individual or organization to
reproduce the contents of this document without charge, in printed or
computer readable form, provided that the following conditions are
observed:
1. Every copy must include this copyright notice.
2. The text of this document must be reproduced in its entirety, without
any deletions or alterations.
3. Material may be added to the text of this document, but all such
material must be clearly marked as not being part of the original text.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digital Press would grant permission to ANSI, in advance, to produce a
derivitive work incorporating portions of the text of CLtL, with the
understanding that the result would be published with the copyright
notice and permission statement listed above. The letter would make
clear that this permission in no way limits Digital Press's right to use
the original material themselves or to authorize the creation of new
editions or other derivitive works for their own use.
Lucid would agree to the same thing with regard to their manual.
Once these agreements are in place, I suggest that we copy the sources
to these documents to CMU. I am willing to coordinate the task of
producing a new document, given these sources, and to do most of the
necessary rewriting as decisions get made. (I will be looking for help
on specific chapters and issues, however.) The new document would
appear chapter by chapter in a directory that everyone in the Common
Lisp community could access. As I mentioned earlier, there would also
be a file listing all of the known differences between the new document
and CLtL and perhaps some other supporting docuemnts not part of the
standard.
If ANSI agrees to the "anyone can copy" provisions described above, I
have no major problem with developing this thing under the ANSI
copyright from the start. However, as of today we have no standing
within ANSI, and I'm not sure that it is appropriate for this document
to be "owned" by ANSI until it has been endorsed by X3J13 and accepted
by ANSI. There's the interesting question of who would own the document
if, for some reason, ANSI rejects it -- we would want to be in a
position to distribute the document and use it as an informal de facto
standard in that case.
Given that, perhaps the right move is to replace ANSI with "us" in the
above copyright notice and agreements, and to assign the copyright to
ANSI when and if they adopt the document as a standard. "Us" in this
case could be a non-profit corporation set up for the purpose -- The
Common Lisp Technical Committee, Inc. -- or it could be, say, the
chairman of the technical committee who would informally agree to hold
the copyright in trust for the whole group. The corporation is the
cleaner solution, but nobody answered my earlier query on what it would
take to form one, so I don't think any of us want to go through the
hassle.
Please let me know what you think of this plan. Perhaps Bob Mathis
could sound out ANSI on whether they would agree to something like this,
Steele could sound out Digital Press, and Gabriel could talk to Lucid's
lawyers about it. We should find out about the plan in which the thing
is copyrighted by ANSI from the start, and also about the plan in which
one of us holds the copyright until the thing is approved.
It would be very nice if we could get this all settled within a week or
two, so that we can start the real work.
-- Scott
∂23-Apr-86 0924 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Specification Document
Received: from USC-ISIB.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 23 Apr 86 09:24:31 PST
Date: 23 Apr 1986 09:24-PST
Sender: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: Specification Document
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: CL-Steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA]23-Apr-86 09:24:51.OHLANDER>
Scott,
I think that your concern over a specification document is
well founded and something that should be resolved as soon as possible.
One concern that I have, however, in letting ANSI have control of the
copyright, is whether we can get changes made in a reasonable way when
we have to. It may be the case that they are perfectly willing to share
the document but that it takes great effort and excessive time to ever
get the document changed. I think that we should look into this
aspect of the matter. Perhaps Bob Mathis could enlighten us.
Ron
∂23-Apr-86 1451 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Specification Document
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Date: Wed, 23 Apr 86 17:37 EST
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Specification Document
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12201025953.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860423173738.3.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that X3 is not part of ANSI.
∂25-Apr-86 1024 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Re: Chairman
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Date: Fri, 25 Apr 86 13:26 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Chairman
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA, RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA, gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]21-Apr-86 10:27:19.MATHIS>
Message-ID: <860425132609.2.GLS@THINK-KATHERINE.ARPA>
Date: 21 Apr 1986 10:27-PST
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
I am willing to serve as Chairman. I don't understand rowing
very much, but I get the impression that the rowers do most of
the work and the coxswain has a role in coordination and timing.
...
I used to row in my undergraduate days at Harvard. One thing to keep
in mind is that the only the coxswain can see where the boat is going;
everyone else faces backwards. The coxswain not only steers, but he
pounds the sides of the boat and yells a lot. He is also responsible
for providing lemons for the rowers to suck on.
--Guy
∂25-Apr-86 1028 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
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Date: Fri, 25 Apr 86 13:28 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: BALLOT - Mathis Chairman?
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]21-Apr-86 11:02:12.MATHIS>
Message-ID: <860425132820.3.GLS@THINK-KATHERINE.ARPA>
Yes.
[Perhaps we should first have a ballot on the subject of:
"Should Bob Mathis be in charge of the first ballot?"
but that way recursive madness lies. :-) Boy, am I in
a good mood today!]
--Guy
∂25-Apr-86 1038 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA EuLisp
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Date: Fri, 25 Apr 86 13:39 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: EuLisp
To: Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA, MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA, gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12200888762.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860425133932.7.GLS@THINK-KATHERINE.ARPA>
Well said. I agree with you. (I am on the steering committee, and I'm
not above swiping Moon's material.)
--Guy
∂25-Apr-86 1315 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Chairman
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 25 Apr 86 15:59:40-EST
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1986 15:59 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12201721776.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Chairman
In-reply-to: Msg of 25 Apr 1986 13:26-EST from Guy Steele <gls at THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
I never rowed in my undergraduate days, so the only image I have of the
role of the coxswain is the guy beating the big drum on the galley in
Ben Hur (and his assistants with the whips and electric cattle prods).
Probably this group is so self-motivated that we won't need the whips
very often...
Ramming Speed!
-- Scott
∂03-May-86 1529 squires@ipto.ARPA Japanese representative
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From: Stephen Squires <SQUIRES@IPTO.ARPA>
Subject: Japanese representative
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
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The following message contains a confirmation for Kouichi's recommendation
for having Ida be the Japanesse representative with his CS-Net address:
---------------
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FROM: ihnp4!kddlab!k2@srava.sra.junet (Kouichi Kishida)
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FROM: ihnp4!kddlab!k2@srava.sra.junet (Kouichi Kishida)
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This mail is just a reconfirmation of my phone message.
The person I recommend for Lisp Standardization Committee is:
Prof. Masayuki Ida
Computer Science Lab.
Aoyama Gakuin Univ.
1626 Ono, Atugi City, Kanagawa 234-01 Japan
TEL 0462-48-1221 ex 4526
CS-Net Address is : ida%utokyo-relay.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Regards,
Kouichi
-------
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∂03-May-86 1903 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japanese representative and other topics
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japanese representative and other topics
In-reply-to: Msg of 3 May 1986 18:29-EDT from Stephen Squires <SQUIRES at IPTO.ARPA>
I had hoped to hear from a few more of the Japanese biggies before we
did anything, but we shouldn't let this hang for too long. Maybe we
should go along and propose to Ida the structure that I suggested
earlier (the JEIDA committee gets to pick a delegate, which will almost
certainly be Ida) and if it sounds OK to him we'll announce the plan
on Common Lisp, to which many other Japanese are now listening.
Maybe we should also send the statement I proposed earlier to Chailloux
and/or to the Eulisp mailing list? People receiving the Eulisp
transmissions have recently seen a reiteration of their view (at least,
Fitch and Stoyan's view) that Common Lisp, as it is presently
constituted, ought not to be standardized. They've got this idea that a
Lisp standard must be some sort of ideal of perfection that industry
ought then to try to live up to, while our view is (I think) that we've
already got a de facto standard, for better or worse, and we may as well
try to formalize it and clean it up a bit in the process.
My earlier proposal on copyrights and such seems not to have led to much
action. Until we find out if Digital Press and Lucid will grant us the
rights I described and if ANSI will agree to the "anyone can use it"
permission, we're effectively dead in the water. I believe that Mathis
should get an answer from ANSI on this, Steele from Digital Press, and
Gabriel from Lucid. Are there problems that need to be resolved before
this can be settled?
As I said earlier, I'm pretty well buried with work through mid-May, but
I expect to make quick progress in resolving a lot of technical issues
after that. If necessary, we can try to settle various issues and put
the decisions in a list, but I'd sure rather have an emerging document
at the center of this effort. Sometime soon, I'll try to come up with a
statement of principles about much change we think is desirable in this
process.
I guess the Technical Committee election is over, and I am your new
chairman. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'll try to keep up a
steady beat on the drum.
-- Scott
∂06-May-86 1052 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Lisp Standardization
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Date: 6 May 1986 10:52-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Lisp Standardization
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: CL-STEERING@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA] 6-May-86 10:52:25.MATHIS>
I have sent the following to other people who have expressed an
interest in the standardization process. I wanted all of you to
get it too, because it is too late to back out now.
This message is to confirm your net address and continuing
interest in the ANSI/X3J13 and ISO/TC97/SC22 standardization of
Lisp. The general mailing list "Common-Lisp at SU-AI" will
continue to receive information, this special list is only for
those with an active interest in the standardization process
itself.
-- Bob Mathis
∂06-May-86 1151 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA X3J13 Hull Pounding
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Date: 6 May 1986 11:53-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: X3J13 Hull Pounding
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA] 6-May-86 11:53:21.MATHIS>
Thank you for my selection as the Chairman of the Steering
Committee.
X3J13 has been approved. There will be no election of Chairman
for that until the end of the year. At the moment, I am the
Convenor of the first meetings. In that role I can effectively
direct the initial work. To that end I am hereby appointing what
we have called a Steering Committee as a Steering Committee to
help in guiding the work of X3J13 and I am appointing what we
have called a Technical Committee as a Technical Committee to
prepare initial items for discussion and potentially a draft of
the proposed standard.
You are no longer a self selected gang, but a legitimate
subcommittee under an approved standrards committee.
On the copyright question -- I have talked to DEC people and sent
some other information to Lucid. ANSI has to make money on the
publication of some of its standards, so the very broad
suggestion of Scott's will probably not work. Questions arise
with respect to commercial publication (PH, AW, Wiley, et al),
manufacturers' manuals (goldhill's distribution of the DEC book,
etc), derived manuals (possibly Lucid's), and on-line
documentation. ANSI would probably not like the first, but would
probably go with the last three. This is something where the
ANSI, DEC and Lucid lawyers will have to work something out with
our guidance.
On the Lucid manual as a starting point. I always assume the
rest of you are better informed than I am, so this is just a
personal request for a copy. It also seems likely that other
companies have their own manuals which may be very relevant in
places. We should probably make a general request for copies of
those manuals and establish a physical library at either CMU or
ISI for reference by the drafters.
Lisp Conference in Boston -- I would suggest a SHORT time period
during the regular session to give a status report (both
X3J13/ISO and technical) and then an evening (or other out of the
normal schedule) session for those specifically interested in
details. We should definitely take the opportunity to meet
ourselves.
Validation test suites -- we need to remind people of this again.
Standing agenda -- I plan to develop a standing agenda for the
Steering Committee that we can also use as a kind of status and
progress report. After reviewing it with you, I will put out
another general message about how X3J13 will be organized and
work.
-- Bob Mathis
∂07-May-86 0710 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Addition to mailing list
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: ram@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Addition to mailing list
If there are no objections, I would like to have Rob Maclachlan of CMU
(RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU) added to the technical and, by transitivity, the
steering committee mailing lists as a non-voting observer. Rob will be
helping me to organize the technical side of things and keep track of
decisions, so it is convenient for me if he is able to follow closely
what we are doing. Rob will of course continue to particpate in the
design discussions on the normal Common Lisp mailing list, where his
contributions have been extremely valuable.
-- Scott
∂07-May-86 1200 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: Addition to mailing list
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From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA, ram@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA] 7-May-86 11:57:09.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12204793064.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
No objections.
Ron
∂08-May-86 2338 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Copyrights
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From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Copyrights
This business of copyrights is a make-or-break issue. We've got to get
this settled to everyone's satisfaction, and we can't wait around for
lawyers to do it at their own usual pace or we'll lose at least a year.
We need to get an agreement in principle between our group, ANSI, and at
least one of Lucid or Digital Press before we can start serious work on
the new specification document.
Bob Mathis says that ANSI needs to make some money on the publication of
the standards document. OK. An interesting question is how much money
they need to make. I have no objection to ANSI making some money on the
document. Presumably they will put the money to good use. But if
ANSI's need to make money from this document means that companies cannot
quickly and easily get permission to duplicate the document, that nobody
will know for sure what the rules are for online use, and that students
have to pay some arbitrarily high price for a copy, then I for one am
not going to particpate in producing such a document. There are so many
possible mistakes I haven't made yet that I'm not going to waste time
making the old ones over again. We've got to have some clear
understandings about these issues before we begin.
I wonder if the following would fly: the manual carries the same
copyright notice as before, with blanket permission for verbatim
copying, but the notice is changed to say that anyone making a hardcopy
must pay ANSI, say, $2. If a publisher or manufacturer prints up a ton
of the manuals, ANSI gets a decent royalty; if a university prints up
100 copies, they can either be honest and pay up or they can break the
law. ANSI would print up some official copies of their own, for which
they could charge whatever they usually do.
There would be no charge for online copies, since it is impossible to do
the accounting. If anyone cares, the charge could apply to copies
distributed on tape, floppy, or optical disk. Lucid and Digital Press
would of course retain full, free, and unrestricted rights to their own
curent documents, but if they want to make copies of the final ANSI
document, they would have to pay like anyone else.
ANSI would make out just fine on that, I think, and the $2 charge
wouldn't bother anyone too much. We would have the nearly-free right to
reproduce the document that we want.
I suppose that if ANSI doesn't want to put all of this into the
document, I would settle for a written agreement between them and us
that they would grant such a licesne to anyone within a month of
receiving the request, and that the royalty would not be more than $2
per copy. And if they break this agreement, or if this document is not
adopted as an ANSI standard, it becomes public-domain.
Bob, can you get a reading on whether ANSI would agree to something like
this? We can lawyerize it all later.
-- Scott
∂09-May-86 1130 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: Copyrights
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Date: 9 May 1986 11:10-PDT
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Subject: Re: Copyrights
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA] 9-May-86 11:10:44.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12205235256.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Scott,
Your points are well taken. I have raised the issue
before and I'll raise it again that we do not want to place
ourselves in the same bind vis-a-vis ANSI that we have had with
Digital. I think that we have to give some rights to ANSI but we
had damn well better make sure that we have ultimate rights to
what we need. We must, for example, have the rights to the
Common Lisp Specification. We should also have the rights (as
you have already pointed out) to provide online manuals and
documents to those who need them for implementation. I think the
issue should be what rights we allow them rather than what rights
they want to give them.
Ron
∂09-May-86 1917 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Copyrights
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Copyrights
In-reply-to: Msg of 9 May 1986 14:10-EDT from OHLANDER at USC-ISIB.ARPA
Ron,
I'm not sure that I understand all of the points in your recent message.
You say that
we had damn well better make sure that we have ultimate rights to
what we need. We must, for example, have the rights to the
Common Lisp Specification.
I'm not sure what rights you are talking about here, and how you want to
define "we". If we produce a document that is both spec and manual, and
if it is accepted as an ANSI standard, I just want to be sure that the
manual is readily available to all who need to use it in various ways.
We also want to be sure that there is some mechanism for producing
revised standards in the future, based on the text of the original
standard, but that would fall out of the normal ANSI process, I think.
I'm willing to let the ANSI process handle any future revisions, and
feel no great urge to keep the process in the hands of the current cast
of characters. I personally plan to get out of the Common Lisp game
once the first round of ANSI/ISO standardization is complete.
-- Scott
∂13-May-86 0143 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: Copyrights
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Date: 12 May 1986 17:32-PDT
Sender: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Subject: Re: Copyrights
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA]12-May-86 17:32:59.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12205449845.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Scott,
My concern is that we don't just abrogate all rights to ANSI. We may
find ourselves in disagreement at some future time. In order to protect the
Common Lisp community, we should have some recourse to always go back to some
original document to make things the way that the Common Lisp community feels
that they should be. This would require, probably, either copyrighting the
Common Lisp specification under a representative organization of the Common
Lisp community or putting the specification in the Public Domain. If we
copyright the spec, we could then grant exclusive rights to ANSI to develop a
standard. I realize that this brings up that old problem of how we organize
such a group, but we may really have to face coming to grips with that issue.
I will talk to some people who have founded nonprofit organizations to see
what is involved. In the meantime, we should press on with getting some
agreement from DEC that we can make a derivative work of the Common Lisp
Specification for an ANSI standard.
Ron
∂13-May-86 0814 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Copyrights
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Date: Tue, 13 May 1986 11:15 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Copyrights
In-reply-to: Msg of 12 May 1986 20:32-EDT from OHLANDER at USC-ISIB.ARPA
I'm quite happy to work with a document in the public domain or one that
is copyrighted by one of us in trust for the group until we decide
what rights to turn over to ANSI et al. Even better is to set up a
formal organization (non-profit corporation, I guess) that consists of
the members of these committees to hold the copyrights, but someone else
has to carry the ball on setting up the legalities of that. This isn't
the problem we discussed earlier of how to organize the whole community
-- I think at this point we could get away with incorporating just the
committees that were selected (indirectly) by the whole community.
We need to get a clear reading from ANSI on what will happen if we bring
them a document that is public domain or copyrighted by someone else and
tell them, as the technical comittee, that this docuemnt is what we
think the Common Lisp standard should be. As I said before, I don't
have nay problem with them making some money selling copies and/or
collecting royalties, but ownership and total control of the text is
another matter. Whether we can come up with a sufficient set of written
agreements to make us feel good about turning ownership over to ANSI is
a complicated question.
It looks like getting this manual stuff straightened out is going to
take longer than I had hoped. As far as I know, most of us haven't even
seen the Lucid manual yet. I guess I'll get to work trying to organize
the issues into a set of items that we can decide, record, and stick
into the text later. More work, but everyone must be wondering why this
is taking so long, so we'd better start making some visible progress.
-- Scott
∂13-May-86 1109 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Addition to mailing list
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Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12206409134.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Addition to mailing list
In-reply-to: Msg of 8 May 1986 07:40-EDT from Martin <GRISS%HP-THOR at hplabs.ARPA>
There seem to ahve been no objections to adding RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU to the
list as a non-voting observer. Dick, please make this change when you
get a chance.
I have no objection to other people
adding their assistants to the list as well, as long as the number
doesn't get out of hand. However, I would like to know specifically, by
name, everyone is receiving this mail and not have a lot of uncontrolled
indirection going on. We may have some sensitive issues to discuss.
-- Scott
∂13-May-86 1439 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA copyrights
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Date: 13 May 1986 12:41-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: copyrights
Subject: [MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA: copyrights]
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]13-May-86 12:41:53.MATHIS>
Sorry this didn't go out because of my typing mistake. In my
opinion, we do not have to form a corporation just to hold the
copyright. For the moment we can begin work on a new document
and we own it until its copyright is assigned; if ANSI doesn't
accept what we have done, they have no right to withhold it from
publication. -- Bob
Begin forwarded message
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Date: 9 May 1986 14:03-PDT
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl←steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: copyrights
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA] 9-May-86 14:03:19.MATHIS>
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Scott, et al,
I will take on the direct negotiation with ANSI on this point.
Scott's point about a prearranged royalty is a good fall back
position. The main thing to ANSI seems to be recovering the
basic cost of publication (not so much a concern for profits).
When we did Ada, DoD provided ANSI some copies that were to be
given to other national standards bodies. A similar idea here
might take some of the financial pressure off. It may also be
possible to arrange some other publication mechanism.
I understand Scott's point about not wanting to make the same
mistakes over again.
About timing; this is going to take a few months. There is no
problem with our working to make a derived work from the Steele
book and including whatever from the Lucid manual that may be
appropriate (both seem willing to let us start from their current
works if they have some rights to use the result). We have not
at this point made any commitment to ANSI or X3 to give them the
result of our work. All these things have to be negotiated.
I talked to some ANSI people earlier this week. They keep
reminding me that I never do anything quite the usual way; but I
remind them that I've had enough of that same old stuff. Anyway
they think there is something that can be worked out. The next
couple of weeks are bad ones for them, because of another large
meeting in the US. I will try to arrange a time when I can meet
with them and work things out face-to-face.
So far I have not seen any message on this topic which disagrees
with my philosophy or approach. If any of you think there are
other points to consider or options to be explored, PLEASE LET ME
KNOW.
Bob
--------------------
End forwarded message
∂13-May-86 1742 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU copyrights
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Date: Tue, 13 May 1986 20:42 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12206481022.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: copyrights
In-reply-to: Msg of 13 May 1986 15:41-EDT from MATHIS at USC-ISIF.ARPA
I've got no philosphical differences with what Bob suggests, but I do
have a legal quibble:
As I understand the copyright law, we can't just "own the new document
until the copyright is assigned" unless we prevent members of the
community from getting copies of the new work. If we distribute the
draft specification widely without some sort of copyright notice on it,
that puts the text in the public domain. That is irreversible. ANSI
could later add a preface of some sort and copyright THAT, but anyone
would have the right to distribute the text with whatever changes they
feel like putting in.
That might not be so bad. Anyone wanting a definitive version with no
possibility of changes would have to come to ANSI or to us, depending on
who they trust. So ANSI might end up selling as many copies this way as
any other. And the rest of us could just forget about lawyers. It
might create some confusion to have mutant versions floating around, but
we could get the word out that only copies that are certified by ANSI
are to be treated as definitive. And it would minimize the amount of
lawyering needed. If ANSI and DEC or Lucid were willing to go along,
this is the route I'd prefer. It's hard to imagine DEC agreeing to
allow a derivitive work in the public domain; I'm not sure about Lucid.
If we don't want to go public-domain, either we keep the new manual out
of general circulation -- impossible -- or we have to put a copyright
notice on it. I think that means an individual or corporation ahs to be
named as the legal entity owning the copyright. So we have to either
form an organization or name one of us to "own" the manual until we turn
some of the rights over to ANSI. And we have to get permission from DEC
or Lucid to use their text in the way we specify. We can't start work
modifying their sources until we have that permission.
If I'm wrong about the legailities here, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.
-- Scott
∂13-May-86 2220 JMC copyright holder
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
I think the organization that holds the copyright can be entirely informal,
i.e. the notice can be Copyright Common Lisp Steering Committee.
It can assign the copyright later. A lawyer won't like it, because
he'll ask, "What if the members fall out?". In so far as there is
confidence that people will continue to get along, this will work.
Legally it will be a partnership, and it would be best if the
organization as such never received any money.
∂14-May-86 0621 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU copyright holder
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 14 May 86 09:22:33-EDT
Date: Wed, 14 May 1986 09:22 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12206619304.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: John McCarthy <JMC@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: copyright holder
In-reply-to: Msg of 14 May 1986 01:20-EDT from John McCarthy <JMC at SU-AI.ARPA>
If copyrighting this document under "Common Lisp Steering Committee" (or
"Technical Committee" or both, whatever we decide is best) is legal it
could save us all a lot of hassle. We'd want to do something more
formal before we turn it over to someone for approval or publication,
but this could allow us to get started. The biggest remaining question
is whether Lucid and/or Digital Press will agree to turn over rights to
create a derivitive work to such a group.
-- Scott
∂14-May-86 0742 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA copyright holder
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 14 May 86 07:42:43 PDT
Date: 14 May 1986 07:44-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: copyright holder
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]14-May-86 07:44:12.MATHIS>
One of the problems in standards work is liability. As an
informal partnership we can certainly copyright the various
working documents; but we should be clear that this is only a
technical proposal, which should keep us out of legal problems
until we get very close to the standardization (by which time
this will all have to be resolved).
Two recent situations point up potential difficulties. In one a
manufacturer of steam pressure gauges went out of business
because of a change in standards for such gauges by the Amer Soc
of Mech Eng; they sued and won. In another situation a life
insurance company threatened to sue members of the COBOL
Committee over changes they were proposing which might cost users
of the standard; they hasn't really happened (yet). I don't
think we are in any danger if we continue to treat our work at
this stage as a technical proposal. By the time we get to the
voting phases of the standards process, we will have all these
issues resolved.
-- Bob
∂14-May-86 0923 RPG Gentlemen,
To: CL-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Here is the list of addresses to which the CL-Steering address forwards.
Please note the mailing list at Symbolics. I presume this includes exactly
Moon and Weinreb. #msg.msg[jnk,jmc] is a private mail file of McCarthy's.
I have deleted from this list, for the purposes of this message, the
archiving entry at SAIL.
rpg,
gls%GODOT.THINK.COM,
#msg.msg[jnk,jmc],
squires@IPTO.ARPA,
Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA,
ohlander@USC-ISIE.ARPA,
fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU,
bobrow.pa@XEROX.COM,
CL-Steering-from-SU-AI@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA,
alan@AI.AI.MIT.EDU,
jar@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU,
griss@HPLABS.ARPA,
RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU
∂14-May-86 1029 DLW@SAPSUCKER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Gentlemen,
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Date: Wed, 14 May 86 13:23 EDT
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Gentlemen,
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA, CL-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 14 May 86 12:23 EDT from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860514132300.4.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 14 May 86 0923 PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Please note the mailing list at Symbolics. I presume this includes exactly
Moon and Weinreb.
That's right.
∂15-May-86 1931 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA iso work on Lisp
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 15 May 86 19:31:34 PDT
Date: 15 May 1986 19:32-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: iso work on Lisp
Subject: [MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA: Text of ISO NWI Proposal 18 February...]
Subject: [mcvax!inria!queinnec@seismo.CSS.GOV (Christian Queinnec)]
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]15-May-86 19:32:36.MATHIS>
I just received the suggestions from Queinnec (who is chairman of
a french standards group) and don't really have a reaction yet.
I wanted you to see this as soon as possible. For comparison, I
am also forwarding the ISO NWI (New Work Item) proposal I drafted
and which has successfully passed through the US voting process.
-- Bob
Begin forwarded messages
Received: By USC-ISIF.ARPA via direct-append with Hermes; 22 Feb 86 08:39:58-PST
Date: 22 Feb 1986 08:39-PST
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Text of ISO NWI Proposal 18 February 1986
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]22-Feb-86 08:39:57.MATHIS>
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
1 Title
Information Processing Systems - Languages - Common Lisp
2 Scope
Development of an ISO standard for Common Lisp including its
syntax and semantics beginning from the proposed base document:
Common Lisp: The Language by Guy Steele Jr., Digital Press,
Burlington, MA, 1984.
The scope of the proposed standard language is essentially the
same as the scope Common Lisp as described in the Steele book;
i.e., the basic features and forms which should be supplied and
the extension mechanisms (functions, macros, and special forms)
which can be used to provide additional capabilities. There has
also been considerable work in Europe on the definition of
EU←LISP and in the US on the implementation of Common Lisp which
must also be considered.
The intent is to describe a programming language which can be
used in a number of different environments. Because of the
nature of the language and its implementations, the distinctions
between implemented language features, predefined system
functionality, and user defined supplementary capabilities are
not the same as in other languages; but there will still be some
issues to resolve about the size of the language, possible
subsets and supersets, and implementors' options.
3 Existing Documents
Common Lisp: The Language by Guy Steele Jr., Digital Press,
Burlington, MA, 1984; list of errata and issues being prepared by
Guy Steele; and also the EU←LISP specifications currently being
developed.
4 Liaison Organizations
The Common Lisp Community, the EU←LISP working Group, and the
various professional societies oriented toward artificial
intelligence programming languages.
5 Programme of Work
The first meeting of an ISO Working Group on Common Lisp should
take place during Winter 1987. Since there is already a well
accepted base document and the Common Lisp Community has already
begun considering issues and revisions, a Draft Proposal should
be ready by January 1988 for SC balloting.
6 Other Comments / Purpose and Justification
Lisp is the second oldest programming language still in current
use (after Fortran). Lisp has traditionally been the language
used for most Artificial Intelligence programming, and is now
becoming popular for non-AI tasks as well. Throughout its early
history, Lisp was the subject of much experimentation; this has
greatly improved the Lisp language, but has also led to a
proliferation of incompatible dialects. This lack of
standardization has impeded the acceptance of Lisp in industry.
In 1981, with the encouragement of DARPA, an effort was begun by
a number of researchers at several organizations to define a
commonly acceptable version of Lisp. The language specification
was written by members of this informal group, after extensive
discussions on the ARPAnet. The resulting book, Common Lisp: The
Language by Guy Steele Jr., has received world wide acceptance.
MACLISP, ZETALISP, SCHEME, INTERLISP, SPICE LISP, S-1 LISP, NIL
(New Implementation LISP), "Standard" LISP, and Portable
"Standard" LISP have all been considered in the design of Common
Lisp; and the most useful features of each were incorporated.
Common Lisp, as described in the Steele book, has now become a de
facto standard within the US, and there is great interest in this
language elsewhere. The following manufacturers currently offer
Common Lisp or have announced plans to offer Common Lisp as a
product: Symbolics, LMI, TI, DEC, DG, Gould, Sun, Apollo, Prime,
Tektronix, H-P, Xerox, AT&T, Pyramid, Lucid, Intermetrics, Gold
Hill, and Franz Inc. There is also a strong interest in Japan.
European efforts at defining EuLISP are building on the Common
Lisp experience.
The Common Lisp Community is an informal collection of people
from industry, academia, and government who have particpated in
the initial design and implementation of Common Lisp. This group
has been in existence for five years, communicating primarily by
ARPAnet. Occasionally the community meets, as they did in
Boston, December 9-11, 1985. At that meeting they decided that a
national and international standards effort for Common Lisp was
appropriate and decided to move ahead.
--------------------
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from mcvax.UUCP by seismo.CSS.GOV with UUCP; Thu, 15 May 86 20:34:06 EDT
by mcvax.uucp; Thu, 15 May 86 22:08:33 +0200 (MET)
by inria.UUCP; Thu, 15 May 86 20:50:57 -0100 (MET)
Date: Thu, 15 May 86 20:50:57 -0100
From: mcvax!inria!queinnec@seismo.CSS.GOV (Christian Queinnec)
To: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Return-Path: <mcvax!inria!queinnec@seismo.CSS.GOV>
<mcvax!inria!queinnec>
Message-ID: <8605151950.AA07594@inria.UUCP>
Here is the proposal of the Lisp experts group from AFNOR for a New
Work Item. This proposal will be submitted to Mr Mathis for opening
discussion. This is quite short because i only have to fill a form
with little space devoted to text, but the items listed cover the
main issues we expect of this standard.
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
Draft Proposal for a New Work Item
15/May/1986 ISO/TC97/SC22
Title : Specifications for computer programming Language LISP
Purpose : the standard will specify 1) the syntax and semantics of the language
2) the conformity requirements 3) the host operating system requirements
3) the run-time libraries definitions 4) the mechanisms to build
developpment environnement libraries.
The standard will provide 1) equal semantics between interpreted and
compiled execution 2) efficient implementations on general purpose
computers 3) true portable applications (including graphics, mouse device,
windowing systems, objects, error handling ...).
Existing Documents :
"Common-Lisp : The language", Digital Press
"Eu←Lisp Proposals for an International Standard", (available from AFNOR)
Other comments : If approved by TC97 and if NWI is assigned to SC22, SC22
will establish a new Working Group.
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
Christian Queinnec
--------------------
End forwarded messages
∂15-May-86 2000 RPG
∂15-May-86 1925 mcvax!inria!queinnec@seismo.CSS.GOV
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Date: Thu, 15 May 86 20:50:43 -0100
From: mcvax!inria!queinnec@seismo.CSS.GOV (Christian Queinnec)
Message-Id: <8605151950.AA07592@inria.UUCP>
To: mcvax!eulisp@seismo.CSS.GOV
Here is the proposal of the Lisp experts group from AFNOR for a New
Work Item. This proposal will be submitted to Mr Mathis for opening
discussion. This is quite short because i only have to fill a form
with little space devoted to text, but the items listed cover the
main issues we expect of this standard.
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
Draft Proposal for a New Work Item
15/May/1986 ISO/TC97/SC22
Title : Specifications for computer programming Language LISP
Purpose : the standard will specify 1) the syntax and semantics of the language
2) the conformity requirements 3) the host operating system requirements
3) the run-time libraries definitions 4) the mechanisms to build
developpment environnement libraries.
The standard will provide 1) equal semantics between interpreted and
compiled execution 2) efficient implementations on general purpose
computers 3) true portable applications (including graphics, mouse device,
windowing systems, objects, error handling ...).
Existing Documents :
"Common-Lisp : The language", Digital Press
"Eu←Lisp Proposals for an International Standard", (available from AFNOR)
Other comments : If approved by TC97 and if NWI is assigned to SC22, SC22
will establish a new Working Group.
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
Christian Queinnec
∂15-May-86 2057 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU iso work on Lisp
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 15 May 86 20:57:42 PDT
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 15 May 86 23:58:44-EDT
Date: Thu, 15 May 1986 23:58 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12207040954.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: iso work on Lisp
In-reply-to: Msg of 15 May 1986 22:32-EDT from MATHIS at USC-ISIF.ARPA
I'm not sure how it is supposed to work in ISO when two groups want to
standardize the same thing in two incompatible ways. Do we both develop
proposals and then fight it out, or are we supposed to fight it out now?
Or is the convenor supposed to try to reconcile the two groups? What
exactly does a New Work Item mean?
Our position, I think, is that Common Lisp as described in ClTL is
already a de facto standard, and we intend to propose an official
standard that reflects this. Any changes will be considered in the
light of their effect on existing user code and implemenations;
incompatible changes will only be adopted if the benefits clearly
outweigh the costs. From what they have said in the past, the Europeans
intend to propose lots of gratuitous incompatibilities -- they didn't
get to play as Common Lisp was being designed, so now they feel free to
change everything they don't like, such as the type of NIL.
I think that these are fundamentally incompatible goals. A compromise
that would let them make just a few incompatible changes is as bad as
letting them redesign the whole language; the existing Common Lisp
community wouldn't buy gratuitous changes at this point just to make the
language more elegant in some eyes. The only other kind of compromise
that I can see is to let us do "ISO Common Lisp" while they try to
develop an "ISO EuLisp", but they seem to reject this since they want to
do "ISO LISP" and they have stated that the current Common Lisp should
not be standardized since it offends their sense of elegance. So unless
the Europeans relent, I think we have to go through whatever process is
invoked when irreconcilable differences arise in the standards process.
If we lose, we've still got ANSI, I guess.
If it comes to a shootout, they've got a few experts, but we've got
heavier ones. I'm not sure how we'd stack up in terms of publication
count, but we certainly have more practical experience by any
conceivable measure. We've also got a large and growing user community
and all of the major U.S. companies, which ought to count for
something. The Europeans are still trying to decide how to define what
a "Lisp" is, and they have nothing remotely resembling a complete
design, let alone implementations. So far, they've postponed all of the
kinds of decisions that lead to real disagreements. On the other hand,
the Europeans probably have the votes of more countries than do right
now, though I suppose we could start recruiting in the third world.
-- Scott
∂16-May-86 1507 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Re: iso work on Lisp
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 16 May 86 15:07:49 PDT
Date: 16 May 1986 14:10-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Re: iso work on Lisp
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]16-May-86 14:10:01.MATHIS>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12207040954.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Scott, Thanks for those comments. I am planning to go to the
next EuLisp meeting in Bath, England on June 2. My purpose is to
try to achieve some compromise that allows work to go forward on
what we think of as Common Lisp. Your point is well taken ( and
I depend on you and others from the technical and steering
committees to continue to remind me) that sometimes a compromise
is really just giving up. If Mary wants the whole piece and John
says let's each take half, it is not a compromise to give
three-fourths to Mary. I'm sorry, it may be a compromise, but it
is not fair or reasonable.
I'll have more on this to say later. I also want to hear from
other people. -- Bob
∂16-May-86 1810 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: iso work on Lisp
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Received: from Cabernet.ms by ArpaGateway.ms ; 16 MAY 86 17:46:19 PDT
Date: 16 May 86 17:46 PDT
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: iso work on Lisp
In-reply-to: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA's message of 16 May 86 14:10 PDT
To: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
cc: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860516-174619-1022@Xerox>
To what extent can we consider the following to make EU happy?
a) subsets of CommonLisp
b) alternatives that are additive
c) alternatives that can be made additive
by loading a support file.
The latter two keeps backwards compatability at th cost of agreeing on a
union that is acceptable, and the first allows smaller upwards growing
parts.
I agree that changes that harm current users must be very important to
be accepted.
∂16-May-86 1916 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU iso work on Lisp
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 16 May 86 22:17:55-EDT
Date: Fri, 16 May 1986 22:17 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12207284746.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Bobrow.pa@XEROX.COM
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: iso work on Lisp
In-reply-to: Msg of 16 May 1986 20:46-EDT from Bobrow.pa at Xerox.COM
To what extent can we consider the following to make EU happy?
a) subsets of CommonLisp
b) alternatives that are additive
c) alternatives that can be made additive
by loading a support file.
My own opinion, which I have expressed to Chailloux on several
occasions:
I've never had any problem with some group going off and defining a
subset, or more than one, as long as they don't create too much
confusion about what the "real" Common Lisp is. That means that if it
claims to be a subset, it must really be a subset and not some
incompatible simplification. And that if a multiple-level standard is
created, the name "Common Lisp" is reserved for the language we
currently have; the others are Common Lisp "subsets" or "kernels" or
something like that, and not "Common Lisp, Level 1". And even the
naming issue might be negotiable.
I personally think that making an official subset is a waste of time.
Any machine with virtual memory can easily support the full language,
and for delivery of critical applications on small machines, the subset
you want is whatever subset you happen to have used. There are simple
GC techniques that flush most of the unused stuff once you're done with
development. I think that if you do want a subset, you want a different
subset for each application: education, CAD, symbol-crunching, writing
editors, and so on. But while I personally have no interest in subsets,
it does no harm if someone goes off and defines one, even if they
make it official. So if that's all it would take to make them happy, I
have no objection.
Chailloux, in private discussions, has said he wants a compatible Common
Lisp subset, but Fitch, Padget, and Stoyan want to clean everything up.
They have stated at various times that Common Lisp should not be
standardized in its current state -- they use the word "standard" to
mean some Platonic ideal of the perfect Lisp. So maybe we could entice
the INRIA people with this offer, but not the others. Even if they
agreed that we get to do Common Lisp while they do subsets, there might
be problems with other groups interested in subsets, including Ida in
Japan, Gold Hill, and Kessler at Utah. All have different ideas.
I have also said to Chailloux that if they have specific ideas for
changes, we would be happy to consider them, especially if they take the
form of compatible extensions. That is not to say that we would accept
whatever changes that they propose -- no blank checks in this business.
But I don't think they're into extensions, from the technical material
I've seen so far. They want to clean things up in fundamental ways and
make the whole language more Scheme-like, on the one hand, and to
preserve their existing investment in the code for LeLisp and Cambridge
Lisp on the other hand. And they have this weird concern for what kind
of minimal Lisp can be done on a Z-80. Why they didn't pick a PDP-8, I
don't know!
I don't want to fight with these people. The split is partly our fault
for not having found some way of including them in the original design
discussions. We should be as accommodating as possible, on all
dimensions, without taking the fatal step of allowing them to dictate
incompatible changes in the existing Common Lisp. I'd really like to
bring the Eulisp people into the fold, but they're academics, and if
they want to be stubborn they don't have to pay attention to the rest of
the world or to the kinds of concerns that come up when you need to sell
a made-up standard to real companies with real users. If they insist
upon being unreasonable and on trying to keep the current Common Lisp
out of ISO, we'll just have to fight it out. They have about a dozen
people involved in Eulisp, more or less. I'm happy to listen to their
ideas, but in a sane world there's no way they should be able to dictate
terms to 30 or so major companies hundreds of people involved in
implementation efforts, and a Common Lisp user community that already
numbers in the thousands and is growing fast.
-- Scott
∂16-May-86 2139 RPG ISO Lisp
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
There are several possible solutions to the EuLisp problem:
1. Convince them that there should be an `ISO Common Lisp,'
an `ISO EuLisp,' and in 10 years, an `ISO Lisp.'
2. Convince them to make EuLisp a Lisp in which Common
Lisp can be easily and efficiently implemented. I suppose
this could be considered a subset of Common Lisp, but
more likely it is a Lisp implementation language.
3. Work with the European manufacturers to:
a. get more European votes, if possible
b. get them to see that their academic interests
are not totally applicable, even in Europe.
I presume that ISO voting in Europe cannot be by a self-appointed,
small number of people.
4. Start investigating ways to sidestep the `if there is an ISO
standard, the US military (?) must use it' problem. In this
case, the US and our Common Lisp friends can vote against
EuLisp, and we can go our separate ways.
I would guess that the only real problem is if ISO adopts EuLisp and
not Common Lisp. I suppose there are more ambitious compromises that
involves starting the work on a true platonic Lisp, but I'm not sure
my stamina is up to that.
-rpg-
∂17-May-86 0741 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU ISO Lisp
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sat 17 May 86 10:42:11-EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: ISO Lisp
In-reply-to: Msg of 17 May 1986 00:39-EDT from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
I agree with RPG's analaysis, and share his lack of enthusiasm for
starting over.
I've been assuming that if we get an ANSI standard for Common Lisp, the
U.S. military and friends will be free to shoose that over an
incompatible ISO standard. Is that right? Presumably some foreign
governments and researchers will not have that freedom; that gives them
some incentive to vote for us rather than EuLisp if it comes down to a
choice at ISO. If the vote doesn't come up for a year or so, the
dominance of Common Lisp will be very clear, since all of the
manufacturers will have their implementations out and in good shape by
then, all of the major expert-system shells will be converted, and the
research community will have made the move. Right now we can see that
the necessary momentum is there, but from the outside it may not be so
clear since lots of things are just in beta-test or unannounced.
-- Scott
∂27-May-86 0605 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU [franz!fimass!jkf: Where we stand ]
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From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: [franz!fimass!jkf: Where we stand ]
Date: Tuesday, 27 May 1986 02:02-EDT
From: franz!fimass!jkf at kim.Berkeley.EDU (John Foderaro)
To: Scott E. Fahlman <ucbkim!C.CS.CMU.EDU!Fahlman at kim.Berkeley.EDU>
Re: Where we stand
I believe that using the Steele book, or any other document of that
form, would be a mistake for a basis for a standard. The book is
written in good English which has its advantages (being thoroughly
enjoyable and subtly witty) and its disadvantages (being incompletly
specified and at times totally ambiguous). What we need is a
excruciatingly dull document which has the form:
1. definitions of terms
2. functions and special forms, alphabetically.
3. special symbols
Each function is defined using simple English and the terms defined in
the beginning.
Appendicies could be added to flesh out sections of functions (such
as the error system or defstruct), but in all cases the official
definition is in the main part of the manual.
The form of the function descriptions could be in a neutral format
from which one could convert it to any of the popular typesetting
languages using a filter.
For example:
function: cons
arguments: x (any-lisp-object)
y (any-lisp-object)
action: Allocate and return a new object of type cons initiatialing the car
slot to x and the cdr slot to y.
This would help promote an international standard since it will make
the translation to other languages easier. I've met someone who
is translating the Steele book to Japanese and I was suprised at the
number of important concepts he has wrong (and his readers will get
wrong).
john foderaro
franz inc.
∂27-May-86 0620 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Where we stand
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Date: Tue, 27 May 1986 09:19 EDT
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From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: franz!fimass!jkf@λkim.Berkeley.EDU (John Foderaro)λ
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Where we stand
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 May 1986 02:02-EDT from franz!fimass!jkf at kim.Berkeley.EDU (John Foderaro)
John,
I understand your concern about the format of the Steele book, and share
it. I think there may be some middle ground between the current book
and "excruciatingly dull" that would allow us to produce a very precise
spec that is also useful as a manual for the working programmer (though
it would certainly not be a good introductory text for the language).
If we can do that, we will prevent the confusion that would arise due to
differences between the official spec and whatever more readable manual
everyone ends up using.
I think that the spec has two kinds of things in it: very precise
descriptions of each of the functions, forms, and built-in variables,
and some conceptual material explaining, for example, how scoping or
packages work in Common Lisp. For the descriptions, the kind of format
you describe (and that we see coming from the Eulisp effort) is indeed
what we want. The Lucid manual is already organized more or less this
way, which is the reason I'd like to get it as a starting point. (We
would have to go over it carefully to get rid of any Lucid-specific
stuff and make sure it really does match Steele.)
For the descriptive material, the Steele book has some useful chunks of
text that I'd like to be able to lift. This text has the advantage that
people have been scrutinizing it for a couple of years, so we know where
most of the ambiguities are. If we write something new, we'll be
discovering new problems for awhile after the user community gets hold
of the new text.
I think that this mixture of formats would be good for online use. One
could create a cross-index of function-description frames, and pointers
to the appropriate chunk of explanatory text where needed.
My inclination is to go with Tex for the new document, as this seems to
be the most widespread text-formatter around. (I won't use any of those
evil hacks with "roff" in the name, and Scribe (TM) is too expensive for
some groups.) If we use Tex macros in a consistent way, automated
conversion to other formatters would be just as easy as if we used raw
text in a rigid format, but the advantage is that we can quickly run off
decent-looking working documents as we go.
Anyway, that's my current thinking on the matter. I'm still pretty
flexible on this. Once we have access to the various sources and can
start putting this together, we can see how various organizations work
out in practice.
-- Scott
∂27-May-86 1154 RPG Mark Your Calendars
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
CC: rhh@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
There will be a meeting of the object-oriented programming group after the
Lisp conference. I will ask Bert Halstead to find a room at MIT or
Symbolics that will hold around 50 - 100 people. I propose that it be
held starting around 2pm on the last day of the Lisp conference, 2pm being
after the conference is over. Shall I send this out over the main mailing
list?
On another note, let me bring you up to date on the Lucid manual
situation. There is a major, unexpected complication in the use of the
manual. The best situation for us (this committee) is that Lucid allows a
derived work with little or no constraint. However, suppose Lucid simply
agrees to that, and the derived work is not sufficiently different from
the original that the usual copyright tests would fail; that is, that the
derived work would have been judged a copyright enfringement of the
original. The fact that Lucid released the derived work implies a release
of the original. The lawyers can solve this, but none of us would want to
sign that document.
Bob Mathis and Lucid's lawyers are proceeding on this front, though
slowly.
-rpg-
∂27-May-86 1234 Moon@SAPSUCKER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Where we stand
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Date: Tue, 27 May 86 15:22 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Where we stand
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12210026673.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860527152215.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 27 May 1986 09:19 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
[Recipient removed: John Foderaro]
....
My inclination is to go with Tex for the new document, as this seems to
be the most widespread text-formatter around. (I won't use any of those
evil hacks with "roff" in the name, and Scribe (TM) is too expensive for
some groups.) If we use Tex macros in a consistent way, automated
conversion to other formatters would be just as easy as if we used raw
text in a rigid format, but the advantage is that we can quickly run off
decent-looking working documents as we go.
I take it you decided to ignore my contention that the only viable format
for working documents is straight text with no formatting commands obscuring it?
∂27-May-86 1247 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Where we stand
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Where we stand
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 May 1986 15:22-EDT from David A. Moon <Moon at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
I take it you decided to ignore my contention that the only viable format
for working documents is straight text with no formatting commands obscuring it?
No, but I decided to disagree with it. As I said at the time in mail I
hope you got, I think that having a way of quickly whipping up a
decent-looking document with an index, visible section headings, and
some way of getting at distinctive fonts for emphasis and for code
examples will be valuable during the development process. I don't think
that a lot of effort should go into making the document beautiful at
this point, but I want it to be reasonably functional and not just
80-column uglitext for reading on terminals.
If the others feel as you do, I'd be willing to discuss this, but I got
the impression that you were the only one who held this view. The one
who does the work of assembling the new document gets a slightly bigger
vote, I think.
-- Scott
∂27-May-86 1352 ALAN@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Where we stand
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Date: Tue, 27 May 86 16:52:10 EDT
From: Alan Bawden <ALAN@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Where we stand
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA, Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA
In-reply-to: Msg of Tue 27 May 1986 15:44 EDT from Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman at C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <[AI.AI.MIT.EDU].46661.860527.ALAN>
Date: Tue, 27 May 1986 15:44 EDT
From: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman at C.CS.CMU.EDU>
No, but I decided to disagree with it. As I said at the time in mail I
hope you got, I think that having a way of quickly whipping up a
decent-looking document with an index, visible section headings, and
some way of getting at distinctive fonts for emphasis and for code
examples will be valuable during the development process. I don't think
that a lot of effort should go into making the document beautiful at
this point, but I want it to be reasonably functional and not just
80-column uglitext for reading on terminals.
While there is something to be said for the ability to generate passable
hardcopy, I have yet to see a text-justifier that has a notation for font
shifts that doesn't render the input text unreadable. TeX's notation is
perhaps the worst of the bunch.
When generating documentation myself, I generally stick to a few simple,
readable conventions to indicate -emphasis-, CODE, <meta-variables>,
.section names, etc. Then a couple of TECO macros generally suffice to
convert the result to TeX input or whatever, when the time comes for fancy
output. I don't know if a group can work this way, but it sure would be
nice to be able to work with readable text. I want to be able to get
proposed text in my mailbox, and not have to run it through TeX in order to
read it without donning my kludge-proof goggles.
Look at it this way, this document is for communication among ourselves
almost as much as it is for communication with the rest of the world.
∂27-May-86 1454 DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA Format of manual
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Date: Tue, 27 May 86 17:55 EDT
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN>
Subject: Format of manual
To: cl-steering@sail
Message-ID: <860527175521.2.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I agree with Scott's message. I've spent many hours working on Lisp
documentation (the Lisp Machine Manual), and there's one point I'd like
to respond to: descriptions of individual functions are the easiest
thing to write. While the existing CLtL isn't sufficiently specific in
its descriptions of some functions, this is not its primary problem.
The real hard part in writing such documentation is explaining the
concepts. This is particularly hard when you're writing a standards
document, that needs to be very precise. While I agree that the
stylized form of function documentation that JKF suggested, and that the
Lucid documentation uses, is a good thing, it should not be viewed as
the most important change towards producing a clear and specific manual.
In my experience, there is an important tradeoff between writing a
manual useful for a reader who's learning what the manual says, and
writing a manual that's very clear and specific. It's hardly impossible
to do some of each, but it's very hard, because often one goal gets in
the way of the other.
I'd recommend that the guideline for the new CL spec is that it should
attempt to present the material in a logical, ordered fashion that
builds from the bottom to the top, and it should attempt to assume that
the reader is not yet familiar with concepts not yet presented, but it
should above all be strict and precise, even if this conflicts with the
other goals.
The balance is subtle and hard to measure precisely. I agree with Scott
that we'll have to experiment some to find the right tradeoff. I also
agree that starting with the existing material, and modifying it to be
closer to what we want, is more likely to succeed than an attempt to
start from scratch.
∂27-May-86 1518 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Where we stand
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Date: Tue, 27 May 1986 18:16 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Alan Bawden <ALAN@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA, Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA
Subject: Where we stand
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 May 1986 16:52-EDT from Alan Bawden <ALAN at AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
When generating documentation myself, I generally stick to a few simple,
readable conventions to indicate -emphasis-, CODE, <meta-variables>,
.section names, etc. Then a couple of TECO macros generally suffice to
convert the result to TeX input or whatever, when the time comes for fancy
output. I don't know if a group can work this way, but it sure would be
nice to be able to work with readable text. I want to be able to get
proposed text in my mailbox, and not have to run it through TeX in order to
read it without donning my kludge-proof goggles.
It seems to me that it would be somewhat easier to create a set of TECO
macros to strip off any TEX formatting stuff you don't want to see. It
takes a serious amount of AI for a teco macro to know whether "I" in
some text is normal English or if it is a variable name that should be
converted to computerfont.
My view is that at least half the time I'm going to be looking at the
paper version of this stuff, and I want that to look halfway decent.
The rest of the time I'll be looking at it on a workstation with a
hi-res screen, and if I don't like the way the TeX input looks there,
it's easy enough to whip up some kludge that display TeX files in some
approximation to how they will look on paper.
-- Scott
∂27-May-86 1545 Moon@SAPSUCKER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Where we stand
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Date: Tue, 27 May 86 18:41 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Where we stand
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12210124396.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860527184125.3.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Character-Type-Mappings: (1 0 (NIL 0) (NIL :ITALIC NIL) "CPTFONTI")
Fonts: CPTFONT, CPTFONTI
Date: Tue, 27 May 1986 18:16 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
My view is that at least half the time I'm going to be looking at the
paper version of this stuff, and I want that to look halfway decent.
The rest of the time I'll be looking at it on a workstation with a
hi-res screen, and if I don't like the way the TeX input looks there,
it's easy enough to whip up some kludge that display TeX files in some
approximation to how they will look on paper.
And how much of the time will you be spending editing it?
I wonder if I could get you to commit to "whipping up some kludge" that
you will run over the text every time you send stuff to me to read so I
can read it, and every time I send edited stuff to you, you will run it
over it again to turn it back into the format that you like. I doubt
that I could. I hope you get my point, which is not at all "Fahlman is
intransigent and uncooperative" (or substitute "Moon" for "Fahlman" if
you like). My point is that we ought to be concentrating on the content
of this stuff, not the appearance. If the appearance won't take care of
itself, it at least does not require the specialized skills of
high-powered language designers.
Two related points: (1) If I have to wade through a sea of backslashes,
curly brackets, atsigns, or any other garbage, I'm a lot less likely to
notice that we forgot to say whether or not FORMAT ~A is affected by the
value of *PRINT-PRETTY*. (2) People like you and I are very easily
distracted into debugging our Tex macros or making the "last" tweak so
something looks pretty on paper, instead of doing what we are supposed
to be doing. Let's leave the book design to the book designers and the
typography to the typographers (and for God's sake let's leave the
litigation to the lawyers) and not erect unnecessary obstacles to getting
the language design accomplished by the language designers. And, oh yes,
I promise to take the ε1character-style shiftsε0 off before I send anything
to you; everybody has their own garbage that somebody else doesn't want
to wade through.
∂27-May-86 1658 JAR@MX.LCS.MIT.EDU text
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Date: Tue, 27 May 86 19:57:22 EDT
From: Jonathan A Rees <JAR@MX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: text
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-reply-to: Msg of Tue 27 May 86 16:52:10 EDT from Alan Bawden <ALAN at AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <[MX.LCS.MIT.EDU].922039.860527.JAR>
I agree with Bawden and Moon. We should try to come up with a notation
that's much simpler and more readable than TeX.
Jonathan
∂27-May-86 2123 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Where we stand
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Date: Wed, 28 May 1986 00:10 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12210188849.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Where we stand
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 May 1986 18:41-EDT from David A. Moon <Moon at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Well, those are all pretty good arguments, and it looks like you've got
me outnumbered, three votes to one. And my heart is certainly not set
on using TeX -- I've used Scribe for the past eight years, though I've
been meaning to move over to TeX for the last two of those years. It
seems clear to me that the final document is going to be done in TeX,
since it is the least obnoxious formatting system that is available on
just about every machine, but I guess we can hire some semi-technical
coolie to format the document and do an index at the end.
In my view, pretending to pass around chunks of the manual in English,
but carefully adhering to some set of conventions that can be
machine-translated into TeX (or whatever), would be more of a
distraction than writing in a real formatting language in the first
place. If it's going to be English, let's just use any natural language
conventions that we all understand. Bawden can say -potato- and I can
say POTATO, and if both forms find their way into the evolving manual,
the guy who does the final formatting can sort it all out into TeX.
Let me suggest the following: If we start from scratch, we'll write the
manual in something like plain English and add the formatting, whatever
it is, at the end. If we start with either the Steele book or the Lucid
book (both of which are now in TeX, I believe), and if the editing is
mostly done here at CMU, I want to reserve the right to continue in TeX
rather than scraping it all away, making changes, and having to add it
all back in at the end. But if we go that way, we'll run the document
through TeX whenever changes are made and create a plain-English file
from it. We can have our discussions in terms of the English version,
people writing proposed changes can use English, and you'll never have
to know that I'm keeping things in TeX behind your backs.
Since you offer, I would prefer not to see those ↑F's, and I'll try not
to use @i[...] too much. I'm tempted to propose that we also agree
never to go over 80-columns, even when responding to nested mail
messages, because the wraparaound is infinitely more distracting to me
than any possible text-formatting garbage. But if I proposed that you'd
all taunt me for not hacking my mail on a -REAL- machine.
-- Scott
∂30-May-86 0745 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Foreigners
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Date: Fri, 30 May 1986 10:44 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12210828480.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Foreigners
I never received any feedback on my proposal that we go ahead and invite
the JEIDA committeee to nominate someone for the steering and technical
committees. (This will probably be Ida.) Before we start voting on
things, which will start soon, I'd like to make this gesture. It could
make a big difference in the enthusiasm with which the Japanese accept
our work, and they are our best potential ally outside the U.S., not to
mention being a substantial fraction of the potential user community.
Shall we move on this?
I'm not sure whether it is worthwhile asking the Europeans if they are
interested in joining right now. Maybe we should wait till Bob Mathis
returns from the Eulisp meeting, where he can see what the mood is over
there. He could quietly inform Chailloux and any other non-radicals
over there that we would like to have a European or two in the inner
loop if we can find one who subscribes to the goal of standardizing the
current Common Lisp without major changes.
-- Scott
∂30-May-86 1257 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Foreigners
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Date: 30 May 1986 12:38-PDT
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Foreigners
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: CL-Steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]30-May-86 12:38:19.MATHIS>
I was a little worried when Scott used this subject heading; I
thought he might be taking about other language type people.
I thought we had all converged on Ida. The only question seemed
to be how to bring him in -- direct personal invitation or
slection by the Japanese committee. I'll go with whichever Scott
decides. We might offer him at least a provisional place until
the Japanese selection is done.
I hope something positive comes of my trip next week. I will be
talking primarily about procedural and organizational issues.
The point that I have noticed in the discussions on this subset
or minimal set or core language is approximately --
standards for subset languages motivated by machine capacities
are not very useful (eg, Minimal BASIC and the PL/I subset);
there is a strong desire in the Lisp community for minimal
logical basis for the language (who else uses "pure" as a
descriptor?), but practicality is the strongest motivator in the
standardization effort (people are using Common Lisp and what we
need now is a common, standardized definition of that). Everyone
seems interested in discussing a minimal core basis for Lisp, but
that should not delay the currently needed standard for what is
generally understand as Common Lisp.
-- Bob
∂30-May-86 1318 Moon@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA Foreigners
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Date: Fri, 30 May 86 16:12 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Foreigners
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12210828480.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860530161241.5.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Fri, 30 May 1986 10:44 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
I never received any feedback on my proposal that we go ahead and invite
the JEIDA committeee to nominate someone for the steering and technical
committees. (This will probably be Ida.) Before we start voting on
things, which will start soon, I'd like to make this gesture.
As far as I'm concerned, go ahead. (I'm not on the steering committee.)
Dan Weinreb will not be reading his mail until the week after next, but
I would be surprised if he disagreed with my opinion on this particular issue.
∂31-May-86 1927 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposed message
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Date: Sat, 31 May 1986 21:55 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposed message
Just to make it all specific, here is the message that I propose sending
to Professor Ida sometime soon. Let me know if you disagree with this
action, or if you have any amendments. After a few days, I will take
silence as agreement.
I'm not sure who the message should be signed by. I'm happy enough to
do this as "Scott Fahlman, on behalf of the Common Lisp Steering and
Technical Committess", but it's more of a steering-type function.
-- Scott
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Professor Ida:
Now that we have reliable network communications with Japan, the Common
Lisp group in the U.S. would very much like to encourage Japanese
participation in our efforts to clarify and standardize the Common Lisp
specification. The members of the Technical and Steering committess
have been discussing for some time how we might include our Japanese
counterparts in the decision-making process. After discussing the
matter with several Japanese researchers, we believe that the following
model may be the best one to follow:
1. The language design discussions will take place on the public Common
Lisp mailing list. We invite any individual in Japan who is interested
in these issues to follow the discussion on this list and to contribute
to it. We believe that the technical barriers to such participation
have now been eliminated, at least for people with access to Junet or
CSNet. Our discussions are in English, so unless some sort of
translation can be arranged, only English-speaking researchers will be
able to participate directly.
2. It appears that your JEIDA committee on Common Lisp is coordinating
much of the Common Lisp activity in Japan. This should continue to be
the focus for the Japanese Common Lisp community. We will try to
maintain close communications with your committee in the future,
probably via netmail to you and other members.
3. For the purpose of formal liaison between our group and yours, we
would like to invite the JEIDA committee to select one person who will
be a member of our Steering Committee and one person who will be a
member of our Technical Committee. (One person can fill both posts, if
you like.) These members will be invited to any face-to-face committee
meetings we might have, but we expect these to be rare events. We
believe that the Japanese members would be able to participate in
almost all committee decisions, even if he is unable to attend some
meetings in the U.S.
Does this seem like a reasonable plan to you? Are there important
segments of the Japanese Common Lisp community who would not be
represented under this plan? Do you have any other suggestions on how
we might handle this?
If you agree with this plan, we will announce it on the Common-Lisp
mailing list, which many Japanese researchers will see.
Best regards,
Scott Fahlman
(on behalf of the Common Lisp Technical and Steering Committees)
∂01-Jun-86 1507 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Proposed message
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Subject: Re: Proposed message
In-reply-to: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>'s message of Sat,
31 May 86 21:55 EDT
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM (Danny Bobrow)
Message-ID: <860601-150701-1707@Xerox>
Scott,
I like the message. Should we include a description of the difference
between the steering and technical committees (what the former does, for
example)?
----- dgb:
∂01-Jun-86 1522 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposed message
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Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1986 18:18 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Bobrow.pa@λXerox.COM (Danny Bobrow)λ
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposed message
In-reply-to: Msg of 1 Jun 1986 18:06-EDT from Bobrow.pa at Xerox.COM (Danny Bobrow)
Good idea. The steering and technical committees have been described
earlier on the mailing list, but some of the Japanese have not been
reading this for very long. The following sentence should do it:
"The Steering Committee is concerned with the administrative issues in
developing a proposed standard and submitting it to ANSI and ISO for
formal approval; the Technical Committee is concerned with the technical
content of the proposal."
-- Scott
∂02-Jun-86 1240 OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA Re: Proposed message
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Date: 2 Jun 1986 12:38-PDT
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Subject: Re: Proposed message
From: OHLANDER@USC-ISIB.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIB.ARPA] 2-Jun-86 12:38:53.OHLANDER>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12211212771.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Scott,
I endorse your message and suggest that you should send
it on behalf of the Common Lisp Technical and Steering Committees.
Ron
∂03-Jun-86 1151 RPG Japan
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Stop the presses! I just talked to a group of Japanese visitors,
and they thought that Ida was too young, and that JEIDA was the
wrong way to go to get the Japanese to go along with the standard.
I'll have more details later tonight - I'm on my way to the airport.
-rpg-
∂03-Jun-86 1341 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japan
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Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1986 16:40 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japan
In-reply-to: Msg of 3 Jun 1986 14:51-EDT from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
OK, nothing has happened in public yet and I've sent nothing to Ida, so
we'll wait for the rest of Dick's input.
-- Scott
∂04-Jun-86 1224 RPG Japan
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Yesterday a Japanese tour group came through Lucid, and the
discussion turned towards standardization. I mentioned that
we were thinking of asking JEIDA to appoint a member. One of the
people there was Prof. Haruki Ueno from Tokyo Denki University,
and he said he was Ida's professor. He strongly stated that
although Ida is a good guy, he is too young to command the respect
of the Japanese computing community. Ueno and others pointed out that
unless we worked through the Japanese Information Processing Society,
the process would not be taken seriously. I don't know anything
about this society, but I became a little alarmed by what I heard.
Any thoughts?
-rpg-
∂04-Jun-86 1502 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japan
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Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1986 18:02 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japan
In-reply-to: Msg of 4 Jun 1986 15:24-EDT from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
This is the sort of thing I was afraid of. It may be that there's a
university/industry split in Japan, with Ida and the JEIDA people on one
side and JIPS on the other. Or it may be more complex than that. My
fear is that there may be nobody who is both senior enough to command
the proper respect and also interested in Common Lisp and willing to
devote soem effort to it. I'm not sure what we do then. Maybe ask JIPS
to appoint someone, even if he's only a figurehead, and proceed that
way.
We really do need to get some more data points from senior people over
there, I guess.
-- Scott
∂05-Jun-86 1522 RPG Japanese
To: cl-steering@SU-AI.ARPA
I got this response to a note to Hiroshi Okuno, the lead guy on
the TAO machine project at NTT, who was recommended to me
by Ueno as a contact person for Japanese standardization.
Dick,
I think that Prof. Eichi Wada, Univ. of Tokyo, is the right person
to organize the Lisp Standarization committee in Japan. I sent
several messages to persuade him to organize such a committee and
information on ANSI and ISO standarization of Lisp, but I haven't
received any reply from him. He is the chairman of the programming
language committee of IFIP in Japan (sorry, I don't know the precise
name of the committee, maybe SC22). All Japanese committees of IFIP
belong to IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japanese, Japanese
equivalent to ACM.) He is also the chairman of WGSYM of IPSJ and
Prof. Ida is one of the co-chairmen. (I was the former co-chairman.)
JEIDA is a private organization concering Lisp Standarization. As you
know, Prof. Ida is the chairman of JEIDA Lisp Subset Committee.
Prof. Wada attended the First Lisp Conference and discussed with Guy.
I don't know whether gls remembered him.
The network address of Prof. Wada is
wada%utokyo-relay.csnet@relay.cs.net
His postal address is
Department of Mathematical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
University of Tokyo
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113, Japan
The postal address of IPSJ is
Information Processing Society of Japan
3-5-8 Shiba-Park, Minato-ku
Tokyo 105, Japan
I'd advise you to send a letter both to Prof. Wada and to IPSJ.
By the way, where did you met with Prof. Ueno? He is one of my best
advisers and friends.