perm filename BIG5.MSG[COM,LSP]1 blob
sn#807423 filedate 1986-01-24 generic text, type C, neo UTF8
COMMENT ⊗ VALID 00065 PAGES
C REC PAGE DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00008 00002
C00009 00003 ∂15-Dec-85 1731 RPG Mailing List
C00010 00004 ∂15-Dec-85 2009 RPG Lists
C00012 00005 ∂16-Dec-85 1116 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Lists
C00017 00006 ∂16-Dec-85 1338 RPG Flushing People
C00019 00007 ∂16-Dec-85 1424 RPG In Fact...
C00021 00008 ∂16-Dec-85 1528 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Flushing People
C00024 00009 ∂16-Dec-85 1554 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Flushing people
C00026 00010 ∂17-Dec-85 2212 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Alan Bawden
C00028 00011 ∂17-Dec-85 2237 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Re: ISO
C00031 00012 ∂18-Dec-85 0635 kessler%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa ISO/European
C00042 00013 ∂18-Dec-85 0954 RPG ISO Committee Membership
C00044 00014 ∂18-Dec-85 0955 RPG European discussion
C00056 00015 ∂18-Dec-85 1223 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA European discussion
C00058 00016 ∂18-Dec-85 1913 SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA Re: Varia Regarding the Meeting
C00060 00017 ∂18-Dec-85 2125 RPG ISO
C00063 00018 ∂18-Dec-85 2206 JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Common Lisp
C00067 00019 ∂19-Dec-85 0013 JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ISO
C00074 00020 ∂19-Dec-85 1006 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA ISO
C00077 00021 ∂19-Dec-85 1056 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Japanese members
C00080 00022 ∂19-Dec-85 1320 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU European discussion
C00083 00023 ∂19-Dec-85 1439 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee membership
C00095 00024 ∂19-Dec-85 1522 RPG Committee Membership
C00098 00025 ∂19-Dec-85 1631 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA European discussion
C00100 00026 ∂19-Dec-85 1703 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee membership
C00108 00027 ∂19-Dec-85 1826 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee Membership
C00112 00028 ∂20-Dec-85 1203 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU European discussion
C00114 00029 ∂20-Dec-85 1202 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee membership
C00119 00030 ∂21-Dec-85 1731 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Varia
C00121 00031 ∂21-Dec-85 2108 SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA Re: ISO etc
C00126 00032 ∂23-Dec-85 1014 RPG Varia on ISO
C00127 00033 ∂23-Dec-85 1044 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Varia on ISO
C00129 00034 ∂24-Dec-85 1207 RPG Committee members
C00133 00035 ∂27-Dec-85 1501 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee members
C00139 00036 ∂27-Dec-85 1553 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee members
C00142 00037 ∂27-Dec-85 1700 RPG Chips
C00145 00038 ∂27-Dec-85 2024 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Chips
C00152 00039 ∂29-Dec-85 0928 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee membership
C00154 00040 ∂29-Dec-85 1220 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee membership
C00156 00041 ∂29-Dec-85 1334 RPG Committee
C00158 00042 ∂29-Dec-85 1535 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee
C00160 00043 ∂29-Dec-85 1601 RPG Order of events
C00161 00044 ∂29-Dec-85 2149 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Order of events
C00163 00045 ∂30-Dec-85 0915 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Chips
C00168 00046 ∂30-Dec-85 0924 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Open meetings
C00171 00047 ∂30-Dec-85 0930 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Chips
C00174 00048 ∂30-Dec-85 0936 RPG Cartwright
C00175 00049 ∂30-Dec-85 1020 RPG McCarthy
C00176 00050 ∂30-Dec-85 1100 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Cartwright
C00180 00051 ∂30-Dec-85 1107 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU McCarthy
C00182 00052 ∂30-Dec-85 1122 RPG
C00183 00053 ∂30-Dec-85 1127 RPG Cartwright etc
C00184 00054 ∂30-Dec-85 1139 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Cartwright etc
C00186 00055 ∂30-Dec-85 1259 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committees
C00191 00056 ∂30-Dec-85 1300 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Cartwright etc
C00195 00057 ∂30-Dec-85 1702 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Cartwright etc
C00197 00058 ∂30-Dec-85 1715 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Steer is to Bull as Steering Committee is to ...
C00199 00059 ∂30-Dec-85 2119 RPG Don't say ``Steer,'' say ``Bull.''
C00200 00060 ∂31-Dec-85 1657 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Steerage
C00201 00061 ∂05-Jan-86 1506 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Membership in committees
C00219 00062 ∂06-Jan-86 1726 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Moving forward
C00222 00063 ∂07-Jan-86 0837 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU [SQUIRES: Membership in committees]
C00225 00064 ∂07-Jan-86 0942 RPG Rees, Griss, and Bobrow
C00226 00065 ∂09-Jan-86 1401 JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ISO Commitee Membership
C00229 ENDMK
C⊗;
∂15-Dec-85 1731 RPG Mailing List
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I have changed the handling of the quinquevirate so that it is
private amongst ourselves - that is, I have altered the archiving
of the messages sent on it to be less accessible. I will create
a list called CL-ISO (it doesn't exist yet) which will be
archived in COMMON.MSG[COM,LSP], and which will include Squires
and Mathis, but not Balzer.
-rpg-
∂15-Dec-85 2009 RPG Lists
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Let me be more explicit:
QUINQUEVIRATE: This is the 5 of us. It excludes Squires and Mathis.
It is archived someplace private. In it we can discuss such issues as:
Do we trust Mathis to not blow it with the French? Is Fateman a total
loser? How do we jettison Balzer?
CL-ISO: This is the 5 of us plus Mathis plus Squires. In it we discuss the
contents of the technical committee, but we can discuss fairness issues
somewhat openly, as well as strategy. It will be archived separately from
COMMON.MSG.
CL-CHARTER: This is anyone who cares to be on it. Here we discuss issues
with the community, such as nominations from the community at large.
∂16-Dec-85 1116 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Lists
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 16 Dec 85 11:16:36 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 16 Dec 85 13:30:59-EST
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1985 11:18 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12167591858.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Lists
In-reply-to: Msg of 15 Dec 1985 23:09-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Dick,
OK, assuming that this is now a private channel, to the extent that
anything on a network can be...
You have mentioned a couple of times the issue of "getting rid of
Balzer". I can't tell if that is just a whimsical example or if this is
on your list of things we want to do. It is rather amazing how quickly
he was able to insinuate himself into the inner circle.
My own view is that Balzer is a pain in the ass sometimes, but that he's
a fairly astute politician and that having him on the steering committee
-- not the technical committee -- might not be so bad. If the rest of
you disagree, the obvious move would be to get Ohlander on that
committee instead, on the grounds that he is the senior ISI person who
will be most directly involved in the support effort, plus the fact that
he has been involved with Common Lisp for many years. We clearly want
someone from the ISI support organization, and we clearly do not need
two such people.
-- Scott
quinquevirate/su
Flushing People
There are many reasons I'd like to jettison Balzer. First, the CL
community tends to not respect him. I got several complaints about
his CL Framework presentation, similar to the ones about his Monterey
presentation. Second, he has always tried to gain control of the Lisp
community; I know he tried this at the Utah (1980?) and the SRI (1981)
ARPA Lisp meetings. He doesn't give a hoot about technical details, only
his personal power base. Third, his research work has always been a little
on the bogus side. None of the work is his, mostly it's Neil Goldman's.
Fourth, he rubs people the wrong way. Fifth, his political savvy is mostly
centered around his personal situation; he is good at having water roll off
his back and little else. He is incapable of seeing anyone's point of view
except for the point of view of the person in the game with the most power.
I strongly resented him attending our lunch, because he was self-invited.
Fortunately, he spent all his time on the phone.
∂16-Dec-85 1338 RPG Flushing People
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
There are many reasons I'd like to jettison Balzer. First, the CL
community tends to not respect him. I got several complaints about
his CL Framework presentation, similar to the ones about his Monterey
presentation. Second, he has always tried to gain control of the Lisp
community; I know he tried this at the Utah (1980?) and the SRI (1981)
ARPA Lisp meetings. He doesn't give a hoot about technical details, only
his personal power base. Third, his research work has always been a little
on the bogus side. None of the work is his, mostly it's Neil Goldman's.
Fourth, he rubs people the wrong way. Fifth, his political savvy is mostly
centered around his personal situation; he is good at having water roll off
his back and little else. He is incapable of seeing anyone's point of view
except for the point of view of the person in the game with the most power.
I strongly resented him attending our lunch, because he was self-invited.
Fortunately, he spent all his time on the phone.
∂16-Dec-85 1424 RPG In Fact...
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
... moments after I sent the last note I got this unsolicited comment
from Alan Snyder of HP:
I would like to say that I found the second Common Lisp meeting to be much
better organized and more productive than the first. I am at least hopeful
that things will progress...
However, I must say that I did not find Bob Balzer's report on his development
environment to be at all appropriate. There are better forums for such a
report (where people specifically interested in programming environments would
more likely be), and the report occupied valuable time better used for more
pressing matters. I recall that a similar thing happened in Monterey. I hope
that the next Common Lisp meeting will not be misused as a forum for Bob to
present his research proposals and projects.
∂16-Dec-85 1528 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Flushing People
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 16 Dec 85 15:26:49 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 16 Dec 85 18:26:42-EST
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1985 18:26 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12167669834.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Flushing People
In-reply-to: Msg of 16 Dec 1985 16:38-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Well, given Dick's position, I guess we should explore ways of
jettisoning Balzer. Two problems that I can see:
1. Squires seems to be the one who is pushing Balzer into the center of
things, with Mathis following his lead. I don't know how close those
two are, but we've got to get Squires to stop doing this, preferably
without causing any serious hard feelings.
2. Since the "services" are apparently to be done by ISI (a unilateral
decision by DARPA, despite what any of the rest of us would have
preferred) we have to somehow perform the Balzerectomy without
destroying any possibility that ISI will function properly to provide
the necessary services. Replacing Balzer with Ohlander on the steering
committee might do the job, but only if this can be done without turning
Balzer into an ememy. If the price of having ISI do the necessary work
is to put up with Balzer on the steering committee, I don't think we
have much choice but to accept this.
-- Scott
∂16-Dec-85 1554 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Flushing people
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 16 Dec 85 15:53:55 PST
Received: from EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 375535; Mon 16-Dec-85 17:49:12-EST
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 17:44 EST
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Flushing people
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12167591858.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <851216174437.3.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1985 11:18 EST
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
....the obvious move would be to get Ohlander on that
committee instead, on the grounds that he is the senior ISI person who
will be most directly involved in the support effort, plus the fact that
he has been involved with Common Lisp for many years. We clearly want
someone from the ISI support organization, and we clearly do not need
two such people.
I don't know anything about politics, but I know what I like.
I never thought much of Balzer, and using the excuse that we shouldn't have
two people from ISI sounds good to me.
∂17-Dec-85 2212 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Alan Bawden
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 17 Dec 85 21:34:02 PST
Received: from EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 376555; Tue 17-Dec-85 21:36:20-EST
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 21:31 EST
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Alan Bawden
To: CL-ISO@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <851217213137.9.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I talked to Alan Bawden about whether he might want to be on the Common Lisp
technical committee (I mentioned this last week to some of you). He said that
his recent lack of presence in Common Lisp discussions was not due to lack of
interest, but due to unwillingness to deal with some of the bozoes on the
mailing list (I'm paraphrasing him here and may be doing someone a disservice).
He said he might be interested in being on the committee, unless it was so
much work that he would feel overcommitted, and depending on who else was
going to be on it.
We should keep him in mind, he has a lot of experience.
∂17-Dec-85 2237 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Re: ISO
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 17 Dec 85 22:37:27 PST
Date: 17 Dec 1985 19:07-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Re: ISO
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]17-Dec-85 19:07:51.MATHIS>
In-Reply-To: The message of 16 Dec 85 1610 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
We should include recognized international experts on the
technical committee for ISO. It is likely that US members will
dominate, but this should not be done by excluding anybody. You
know the technical community better than I do. If there are
appropriate people from the international community, we should
include them as soon as possible. -- Bob Mathis
quinquevirate/su
ISO Committee Membership
In drafting the list of people on the technical committee, we must include
international representation as well as american. So says Mathis.
I talked to a manager at Xerox, and Bobrow is acceptable as the Xerox
representative (unless someone suddenly objects). This manager has the
power to stifle Masinter - that's why Masinter was not at the meeting
last week.
This Xerox manager objected to DLW and Moon both being on the committee.
I'm not sure I can manipulate him into acquiescing on this point.
I got some interesting mail from Utah, which is part of a discussion
among the Europeans. It seems their idea of a standard Lisp is a cros
between Scheme (good idea) and 3-Lisp (bad idea). Of course, they want a
formal semantics, which is tedious to do for a large language, so they
want a small language. I will forward that mail to you, but forward it
no further.
-rpg-
∂18-Dec-85 0635 kessler%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa ISO/European
Received: from UTAH-CS.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 18 Dec 85 06:33:41 PST
Received: from utah-orion.ARPA by utah-cs.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA04199; Wed, 18 Dec 85 07:34:15 MST
Received: by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA10516; Wed, 18 Dec 85 07:34:11 MST
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 85 07:34:11 MST
From: kessler%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa (Robert Kessler)
Message-Id: <8512181434.AA10516@utah-orion.ARPA>
To: rpg@su-ai.arpa
Subject: ISO/European
We have a contact that apparently is involved in the ISO standardization work.
Julian Padget is a professor at the University of Bath in England (John Fitch
is another professor with an account that they share - which is why the
strange return address). Anyway,
the following are parts of some conversations between Julian and us. Please
don't redistribute it, but it makes for interesting reading. I think it might
give you some insight into what they are thinking:
From Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Mon Dec 16 15:24:29 1985
Received: from Cs (cs.ucl.ac.uk) by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA03657; Mon, 16 Dec 85 15:23:55 MST
Message-Id: <8512162223.AA03657@utah-orion.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 22:19:07 GMT
From: Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
To: shebs@utah-orion.arpa, kessler@utah-orion.arpa, galway@utah-orion.arpa
Subject: European common LISP
Status: RO
Thanks for the summary of the Boston meeting. Any other tidbits will be
welcome. It may not come as much of a surprise to hear that John and I
are the UK representatives on the European standardisation group. You
might even perceive my hand in the plan for a smaller and formally defined
LISP! The current schedule calls for us to meet on the first moday of
every month (most likely in Paris at IRCAM (dial 4000 for Boulez)).
The name for the language is EU-LISP, which when franglaised (pardon my
verbing) is l'EU-LISP whic is not so different from Le-LISP!
Presently our energies are directed toward trying to produce an operational
semantics for EU-LISP (on the basis that denotational gets too complicated
with all those stores, environments and continuations and is only meaningful
to an expert, abstract semantic algebras and initial algebras are too
darned hairy and group/category theoretic semantics, similarly, require too
much background to be intelligible to the average implementor).
No doubt you can also work out why Utah is somewhere we can trust - your
(original) aims (you have recently been a little diverted!) do
coincide, in part, with ours. The sooner Will gets over here the sooner
he can go spend the weekend in Paris!!
--Julian.
PS: If you have suggestions/questions please fire away.
From Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Tue Dec 17 08:02:31 1985
Received: from Cs (cs.ucl.ac.uk) by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA06602; Tue, 17 Dec 85 08:02:00 MST
Message-Id: <8512171502.AA06602@utah-orion.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 14:47:54 GMT
From: Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
To: shebs <@UTAH-CS:shebs@utah-orion.arpa>
Cc: galway@utah-orion.arpa, kessler@utah-orion.arpa
Subject: Re: European common LISP
Status: RO
The intention is for something in the *spirit* of SCHEME and 3-LISP but
without the iconiclasm. Why do you believe that whatever we have to do is
going to be a *subset* of Common LISP? CL was not designed...nor was any
consideration given to a need to subset - but I need hardly tell you lot
that; you have been through the manual and the problems many times.
I am surprised you find denotational semantics straightforward or easy for
CL. BTW have you read the paper by Muchnick and Pleban in the 1980 LISP
conference proceedings - that will show you how messy things can get. Stores,
environments and continuations are pleasant enough mathematical concepts (and
a handy way of circumventing the problem), but trying to synthesize an
implementation from such a description is not something I'd care to tackle
before breakfast.
Because I think it is important that many people be able to read the
definition once written and, more importantly, thereafter produce a
working conforming system, operational semantics has greater appeal.
λWe plan (the europeans that is) to implement our design in parallel on
Le←LISP and Cambridge LISP (PSL if I had it!) a little behind the definition
group.
Would you mind explaining the remark in your summary of the Boston meeting that
was along the lines of "...if it had been known that the Europeans did not
approve of certain things in CL, a different decision might have been made".
Apologies for paraphrasing you! I have also had a report from Jerome of
events - he said that Mathis was spouting anti-europeanisms and was
particularly negative about the French. Can you tell me what Mathis said
please?
I shall be in Tampa for POPL - see you there?
--Julian.
From shebs Tue Dec 17 08:56:39 1985
Received: by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA06835; Tue, 17 Dec 85 08:56:33 MST
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 08:56:33 MST
From: shebs (Stanley Shebs)
Message-Id: <8512171556.AA06835@utah-orion.ARPA>
To: @UTAH-CS:shebs@utah-orion.arpa, Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: European common LISP
Cc: galway@utah-orion.arpa, kessler@utah-orion.arpa
Status: RO
Not to get into big arguments, but the main reason I favor Common
Lisp is that it is by and large a conservative design. Recall that
the purpose of the standard is to facilitate porting programs around
between different implementations. If so, then compatibility with
existing code is far more important than semantic elegance. There
is just too much Lisp code out there for anyone to say "you can't
have a variable 'list' and use the function 'list' in the same scope",
even if everybody fervently believed that single-cell Lisps were the
way to go. If this weren't a problem, Fortran and Cobol would be
of purely historical interest and everybody would be running Lisp
or some other wonderful and high-level language. I would guess that
there is maybe a million lines of Lisp code that would have to be
converted, not to mention thousands of programmers. Common Lisp
isn't intended to be elegant; it's intended to be compatible. If
I write a CL program today, I know it will work on a dozen Lisps,
but if I write a 3-Lisp program today, it won't run much of anywhere.
I would save elegant languages for research and for future standards.
As one of the Gang of 5 commented, "It's hard to test out things in
your head". I would add a corollary that "things that are easy to
specify are not necessarily easy to use"...
Enough of this - I'm planning to get warm in Tampa, so we can continue
the diatribes (oops, I mean continue the discussion :-)!
stan
∂18-Dec-85 0954 RPG ISO Committee Membership
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In drafting the list of people on the technical committee, we must include
international representation as well as american. So says Mathis.
I talked to a manager at Xerox, and Bobrow is acceptable as the Xerox
representative (unless someone suddenly objects). This manager has the
power to stifle Masinter - that's why Masinter was not at the meeting
last week.
This Xerox manager objected to DLW and Moon both being on the committee.
I'm not sure I can manipulate him into acquiescing on this point.
I got some interesting mail from Utah, which is part of a discussion
among the Europeans. It seems their idea of a standard Lisp is a cros
between Scheme (good idea) and 3-Lisp (bad idea). Of course, they want a
formal semantics, which is tedious to do for a large language, so they
want a small language. I will forward that mail to you, but forward it
no further.
-rpg-
∂18-Dec-85 0955 RPG European discussion
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
∂18-Dec-85 0635 kessler%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa ISO/European
Received: from UTAH-CS.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 18 Dec 85 06:33:41 PST
Received: from utah-orion.ARPA by utah-cs.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA04199; Wed, 18 Dec 85 07:34:15 MST
Received: by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA10516; Wed, 18 Dec 85 07:34:11 MST
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 85 07:34:11 MST
From: kessler%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa (Robert Kessler)
Message-Id: <8512181434.AA10516@utah-orion.ARPA>
To: rpg@su-ai.arpa
Subject: ISO/European
We have a contact that apparently is involved in the ISO standardization work.
Julian Padget is a professor at the University of Bath in England (John Fitch
is another professor with an account that they share - which is why the
strange return address). Anyway,
the following are parts of some conversations between Julian and us. Please
don't redistribute it, but it makes for interesting reading. I think it might
give you some insight into what they are thinking:
From Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Mon Dec 16 15:24:29 1985
Received: from Cs (cs.ucl.ac.uk) by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA03657; Mon, 16 Dec 85 15:23:55 MST
Message-Id: <8512162223.AA03657@utah-orion.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 22:19:07 GMT
From: Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
To: shebs@utah-orion.arpa, kessler@utah-orion.arpa, galway@utah-orion.arpa
Subject: European common LISP
Status: RO
Thanks for the summary of the Boston meeting. Any other tidbits will be
welcome. It may not come as much of a surprise to hear that John and I
are the UK representatives on the European standardisation group. You
might even perceive my hand in the plan for a smaller and formally defined
LISP! The current schedule calls for us to meet on the first moday of
every month (most likely in Paris at IRCAM (dial 4000 for Boulez)).
The name for the language is EU-LISP, which when franglaised (pardon my
verbing) is l'EU-LISP whic is not so different from Le-LISP!
Presently our energies are directed toward trying to produce an operational
semantics for EU-LISP (on the basis that denotational gets too complicated
with all those stores, environments and continuations and is only meaningful
to an expert, abstract semantic algebras and initial algebras are too
darned hairy and group/category theoretic semantics, similarly, require too
much background to be intelligible to the average implementor).
No doubt you can also work out why Utah is somewhere we can trust - your
(original) aims (you have recently been a little diverted!) do
coincide, in part, with ours. The sooner Will gets over here the sooner
he can go spend the weekend in Paris!!
--Julian.
PS: If you have suggestions/questions please fire away.
From Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Tue Dec 17 08:02:31 1985
Received: from Cs (cs.ucl.ac.uk) by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA06602; Tue, 17 Dec 85 08:02:00 MST
Message-Id: <8512171502.AA06602@utah-orion.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 14:47:54 GMT
From: Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
To: shebs <@UTAH-CS:shebs@utah-orion.arpa>
Cc: galway@utah-orion.arpa, kessler@utah-orion.arpa
Subject: Re: European common LISP
Status: RO
The intention is for something in the *spirit* of SCHEME and 3-LISP but
without the iconiclasm. Why do you believe that whatever we have to do is
going to be a *subset* of Common LISP? CL was not designed...nor was any
consideration given to a need to subset - but I need hardly tell you lot
that; you have been through the manual and the problems many times.
I am surprised you find denotational semantics straightforward or easy for
CL. BTW have you read the paper by Muchnick and Pleban in the 1980 LISP
conference proceedings - that will show you how messy things can get. Stores,
environments and continuations are pleasant enough mathematical concepts (and
a handy way of circumventing the problem), but trying to synthesize an
implementation from such a description is not something I'd care to tackle
before breakfast.
Because I think it is important that many people be able to read the
definition once written and, more importantly, thereafter produce a
working conforming system, operational semantics has greater appeal.
λWe plan (the europeans that is) to implement our design in parallel on
Le←LISP and Cambridge LISP (PSL if I had it!) a little behind the definition
group.
Would you mind explaining the remark in your summary of the Boston meeting that
was along the lines of "...if it had been known that the Europeans did not
approve of certain things in CL, a different decision might have been made".
Apologies for paraphrasing you! I have also had a report from Jerome of
events - he said that Mathis was spouting anti-europeanisms and was
particularly negative about the French. Can you tell me what Mathis said
please?
I shall be in Tampa for POPL - see you there?
--Julian.
From shebs Tue Dec 17 08:56:39 1985
Received: by utah-orion.ARPA (5.5/4.40.2)
id AA06835; Tue, 17 Dec 85 08:56:33 MST
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 08:56:33 MST
From: shebs (Stanley Shebs)
Message-Id: <8512171556.AA06835@utah-orion.ARPA>
To: @UTAH-CS:shebs@utah-orion.arpa, Fitch%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: European common LISP
Cc: galway@utah-orion.arpa, kessler@utah-orion.arpa
Status: RO
Not to get into big arguments, but the main reason I favor Common
Lisp is that it is by and large a conservative design. Recall that
the purpose of the standard is to facilitate porting programs around
between different implementations. If so, then compatibility with
existing code is far more important than semantic elegance. There
is just too much Lisp code out there for anyone to say "you can't
have a variable 'list' and use the function 'list' in the same scope",
even if everybody fervently believed that single-cell Lisps were the
way to go. If this weren't a problem, Fortran and Cobol would be
of purely historical interest and everybody would be running Lisp
or some other wonderful and high-level language. I would guess that
there is maybe a million lines of Lisp code that would have to be
converted, not to mention thousands of programmers. Common Lisp
isn't intended to be elegant; it's intended to be compatible. If
I write a CL program today, I know it will work on a dozen Lisps,
but if I write a 3-Lisp program today, it won't run much of anywhere.
I would save elegant languages for research and for future standards.
As one of the Gang of 5 commented, "It's hard to test out things in
your head". I would add a corollary that "things that are easy to
specify are not necessarily easy to use"...
Enough of this - I'm planning to get warm in Tampa, so we can continue
the diatribes (oops, I mean continue the discussion :-)!
stan
∂18-Dec-85 1223 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA European discussion
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 18 Dec 85 12:19:49 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 377243; Wed 18-Dec-85 15:07:29-EST
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 85 15:08 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: European discussion
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 18 Dec 85 12:55-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-ID: <851218150813.1.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Well, it certainly looks as if even if the French are interested in a CL
subset, the British contingent (assuming this Fitch represents it) wants
to start designing a whole new language. I'd say this casts severe
doubts on whether we can work through ISO after all. I can't say I'm
surprised; it's so much more fun do design a new Lisp than to agree with
Americans to standardize on one that they already designed.
Should we consult Mathis at this point?
∂18-Dec-85 1913 SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA Re: Varia Regarding the Meeting
Received: from USC-ISI.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 18 Dec 85 19:13:30 PST
Date: 18 Dec 1985 22:12-EST
Sender: SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA
Subject: Re: Varia Regarding the Meeting
From: Stephen L. Squires <SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA>
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: squires@USC-ISI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISI.ARPA]18-Dec-85 22:12:18.SQUIRES>
In-Reply-To: The message of 16 Dec 85 1603 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
I have recommeded that the on the network policy be expaned to include
organizations that provide significant "support" to DARPA projects.
This may have to be handled through a special "$1" contract
to formalize the relationship so that we do not open the door
to everyone.
I agree with Ron being on the Steering Committee.
What is your recommendation for Balzer's role besides keeping
on top of the support ISI will provide (which may be sufficient
involvement)?
I would like to have the first technical advisory meeting in
January at DARPA to get the process started.
∂18-Dec-85 2125 RPG ISO
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Dan worries to much and too fast. When we approached people on Common
Lisp originally, they were doing their own things, and now we've managed
to sway most people. I know Padget a bit, and I'm not unfriendly with
Fitch. I think we need to convince them that Common Lisp is here to stay
and that they should concentrate on a clean substrate for their future
research. Europeans understand politics better than most Americans.
Xerox would like Bobrow on the committee. I assume there is no objection
to this. The management at Xerox seems eager to join in with Common Lisp
and to make up lost ground as fast as possible. Privately, the management
cannot believe the pig-headedness that the technical group at Parc
demonstrates.
I talked to Gary McGreal (an old volleyball compatriot who used to be at
ISI) who worked with Mathis on the ADA ISO committee. He believes that
Mathis's strength is that he is at the right place at the right time.
He is not forceful, and we will have to supply that. Gary states, `you
can easily dominate him.'
Squires wants we 5 to meet in January to solidify plans. Mid-January
is fine with me - perhaps I need to travel to the East then anyway.
Here is a list of people that Moon, Weinreb, and I consed up:
Bobrow Xerox
VanMelle Xerox
Masinter Xerox
Griss HP
Kessler Utah
Greenblatt LMI
Foderaro Franz
Pratt LMI
Barber Gold Hill
vanRoggen DEC
Wegman IBM
Fateman Berkeley/Franz
Hedrick Rutgers
McCarthy Stanford (invented Lisp)
Clinger Indiana
Meehan Yale
Rees MIT
Bawden MIT
∂18-Dec-85 2206 JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Common Lisp
Received: from MIT-MC.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 18 Dec 85 22:06:32 PST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 01:09:06 EST
From: Jonathan A Rees <JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Common Lisp
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: Msg of 18 Dec 85 2125 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-ID: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].760459.851219.JAR>
Date: 18 Dec 85 2125 PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
If asked to serve on the Common Lisp ISO committee, would you consider
it? This is not an invitation, but I want to know whether to cross
you off the list.
I would consider it and probably say no due to lack of time and
patience. Don't cross me off the list before talking with me further.
Thanks.
Why not restrict the LISP: package to export only those things in the CL
manual, and not local language extensions? I pose this as an example of
the kind of change I would require before considering the language
standardizable. I suspect there are others, although I haven't thought
about it.
I think that someone like me with a little sympathy for a rigorous
approach to semantics could do a lot of good on such a committee, and my
opinion about the tractability of Common Lisp has changed somewhat in
recent months (in 1981 I said it was an absolutely lost cause, now I'm
not so sure).
jar@mc/su
ISO
We, at Lucid, have just gone through the hassle of putting into the Lisp
package only those things in CLtL, while our own extensions are in the
Lucid package. The Lisp package imports from the Lucid package. There
is too much opportunity for unfindable bugs if you don't do this. In fact,
I'm not sure we're gotten all the things in the right packages yet.
If I were a real user, I would not stand for a CL that didn't do this.
The mechanics of ISO will be to work on the ARPANET 90% of the time,
meeting face-to-face very rarely. We are all very busy, and we are interested
in top people. Please consider any invitation carefully. (Psst, maybe we can
sneak in continutations!!)
-rpg-
∂19-Dec-85 0013 JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ISO
Received: from MIT-MC.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 00:13:20 PST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 03:15:58 EST
From: Jonathan A Rees <JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: ISO
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: Msg of 18 Dec 85 2216 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-ID: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].760525.851219.JAR>
Date: 18 Dec 85 2216 PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
We, at Lucid, have just gone through the hassle of putting into the Lisp
package only those things in CLtL, while our own extensions are in the
Lucid package. The Lisp package imports from the Lucid package. There
is too much opportunity for unfindable bugs if you don't do this. In fact,
I'm not sure we're gotten all the things in the right packages yet.
If I were a real user, I would not stand for a CL that didn't do this.
I'm glad you agree. Do you want to tell this to the mailing list or
should I? I think it's very important. Although taken all the way it
implies things like LAMBDA cannot have a definition as a function or
macro, and CAR cannot have a value, since of user A's code makes use of
the value cell of CAR, and user B depends on the value of CAR meaning
something interesting in the local implementation, A and B can't run
their code together. The whole point of standardization is code sharing
right? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do it in the same address
space?
...Symbolics would have to retract their LAMBDA macro (or else, more
obviously, LAMBDA should become a macro in CL).
I would also like to have the home package of things exported by LISP:
defined to be LISP: . Implementors will resist this, and it's less
important than the previous point, but I think it would be nice. For
example, it makes shadowed symbol re-readable in different Common Lisp
implementations: suppose that Lucid CL's CAR is in the LUCID: package.
If you do
(shadow 'car)
(print 'lisp:car)
you get LUCID:CAR. Read the file in on your 3600 and you get "Do you want
to create a LUCID package," or, worse, one could exist which shadows CAR.
While I'm griping, what about the problem of package name conflicts?
Say I write a hairy program and call it LUCID, and of course put it in
the LUCID package. I load it into your machine and it crashes Lisp. We
need an agreed-upon domain-naming style naming convention, or
hierarchical package structure, or translation tables, or something.
The mechanics of ISO will be to work on the ARPANET 90% of the time,
meeting face-to-face very rarely. We are all very busy, and we are interested
in top people. Please consider any invitation carefully.
Sounds doable.
(Psst, maybe we can sneak in continutations!!)
If you think there's a mildly real chance of bringing in continuations,
I'll write a paper explaining what I know about how to implement them (the
pseudo-EGC hack, phantoms stacks, spaghetti, macaroni, etc.). At the
very least they could have optional complex-number-like status, although
then why bother.
The only real problem I can see is defining their interaction with
UNWIND-PROTECT. The only reasonable thing I can come up with is that
UNWIND-PROTECT should mean the same as GC-PROTECT or RECLAIM-PROTECT -
code which must get run at the soonest practically determinable point in
time that the stack frame is known to be inaccessible. In the case of
random frames in the heap, only the GC is really capable of determining
whether a frame is still alive. A Lisp which has "populations" can keep
track of all upwards continuations ever created so that users can
manually track them down without doing a GC, but this is pretty iffy
stuff, especially with all the unknowns of multiprocessors & concurrent
GC's. ... Actually reclamation hacks arenn't really reasonable things
to specify, since they're semantically unsound (or complicated). Any
ideas?
∂19-Dec-85 1006 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA ISO
Received: from THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 10:03:35 PST
Received: from jehosephat by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Thu, 19 Dec 85 13:03:39 est
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 13:03 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: ISO
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 19 Dec 85 00:25-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-Id: <851219130353.0.GLS@THINK-JEHOSEPHAT.ARPA>
Date: 18 Dec 85 2125 PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Squires wants we 5 to meet in January to solidify plans. Mid-January
is fine with me - perhaps I need to travel to the East then anyway.
Here is a list of people that Moon, Weinreb, and I consed up:
I have roughly ordered it here according to my own preferences, and have
added a few names (indicated by *). The ordering is affected not only
by estimation of ability to make technical contributions, but also by
considerations of representation, such as not wanting too many reps from
the same place and needing to have a rep from particular places.
Bobrow Xerox
Bawden MIT
Griss HP
* Ida, Masayuki
Clinger Indiana [actually, he's at Tektronix, isn't he?]
* Chailloux, Jerome
Fateman Berkeley/Franz
* Padget or Fitch (or Norman?)
Rees MIT
Wegman IBM
Hedrick Rutgers
McCarthy Stanford (invented Lisp)
Greenblatt LMI
Kessler Utah
Barber Gold Hill
vanRoggen DEC
Foderaro Franz
Meehan Yale
VanMelle Xerox
Masinter Xerox
Pratt LMI
∂19-Dec-85 1056 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Japanese members
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 10:56:05 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 378594; Thu 19-Dec-85 13:55:41-EST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 13:54 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Japanese members
To: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <851219130353.0.GLS@THINK-JEHOSEPHAT.ARPA>
Message-ID: <851219135455.0.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
For Japanese representatives, we should also consider Yuasa and
Hagiya of Kyoto University. These are the guys who implemented Kyoto
Common Lisp. I don't know much about their abilities as language
designers, but at least they understand Common Lisp well, and consider
themselves part of the Common Lisp "school" of Lispers. They're also
friendly and easy to get along with, and their English is good enough
that there wouldn't be any particular problems.
I don't know as much about Ida. He's certainly a big Common Lisp
supporter, but I don't have much idea about him technically; maybe you
know more. I don't know whether there is some Japanese force that would
tend to greatly prefer a Professor like Ida to a Grad Student like Yuasa
or Hagiya.
Takeuchi and Okuno from NTT are very bright and friendly guys too, but
because they are into their own language rather than Common Lisp, I'm
less inclined to propose their inclusion on the committee.
Then there's always Chikayama, of ICOT, who implemented Maclisp for the
IBM mainframes (UTILISP) and is designing ESP, the Fifth-Generation
Project language. He's also very bright and knows about Lisp
implementations. Hard to see an ICOT person on a Lisp standardization
committee, though!
∂19-Dec-85 1320 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU European discussion
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 13:20:10 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 19 Dec 85 16:19:39-EST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1985 16:19 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12168433134.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: European discussion
In-reply-to: Msg of 18 Dec 1985 15:08-EST from Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW at SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
I don't really see the bizarre ideas of Fitch, et al, as a threat to the
ISI standardization effort. If they want to go off by themsleves and
develop a schemeish Lisp, with or without ISO standardization, that's no
problem. If they want to fight the French for control of the "little
Lisp" effort that's no problem (for us) either.
The only threat is if they should somehow end up being the ONLY ISO Lisp
effort, or if they want to use some name confusable with "Common Lisp"
for their thing, or if instead of doing something distinct and separate
from Common Lisp they want us to seriously consider their ideas in
defining the Common Lisp standard. If any of those things happen, we
drop ISO like a hot potato and proceed to plan B, but I really don't see
any of these as being at all likely.
I'm happy either if our effort ends up being "ISO LISP" and there are no
other Lisps, or if our thing ends up being "ISO Common Lisp" and nothing
else has a name close to that. Either way, we get our standard and
nobody gets confused by competing efforts. In defining "our" Lisp, we
should be willing to listen to other groups, but we should not be in a
postion of having to give in to them if their goals do not coincide with
ours. That's my bottom line.
-- Scott
∂19-Dec-85 1439 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee membership
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 14:39:37 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 19 Dec 85 17:39:03-EST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1985 17:38 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12168447585.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Committee membership
I'm not sure at what point this discussion should move to CL-ISO to
include Mathis and Squires, but I guess sifting through a few
preliminary ideas with just the five of us couldn't hurt.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the steering committee:
Mathis Definite
Squires Definite
Ohlander We need someone from ISI. As I understand it, Ohlander
will be in charge of the group that will include, among
many other things, the Common Lisp support. I think
that all of us find him easier to deal with than Balzer.
If Ohlander can't or won't do this, we have to think
hard about whether to include Balzer.
Maybe those three are enough. Perhaps we want to include someone with a
hard-core technical orientation in this group. Possibilities might
inlcude Weinreb (if he is not on the technical comittee and wants to put
up with this hassle) or perhaps Gabriel (as the most political of the
gang of five). I'm guessing that people won't care too much about this
body being representative, but if the issue is pressed, perhaps someone
like Gary Brown from DEC could be added as a token industrial type who
will do some work and who won't make trouble. Maybe someone from TI or
IBM as well?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the technical committee:
I'm not sure how many of us were present at the time, but at one of the
lunches I raised with Weinreb and Moon the question of whether one of
them should perhaps step down so that it wouldn't look like the
committee was stacked in favor of Symbolics. (Of course, the one to
step down would have as much influence in the technical discussions as
he ever had. The only question is who spends time flying off to
meetings and who gets an official vote. I don't expect any technical
issues to be decided by one vote, in any case.) At the time, Weinreb
said that he would probably be the logical one to step down, and he
wouldn't mind that. If he still feels that way, we can proceed on the
assumption that the technical committee starts with Gabriel, Steele,
Moon, and me. (People don't seem to count me as a Lucid person, which
is good; I don't really count myself as a Lucid person when I'm dealing
with Common Lisp issues.)
Danny Bobrow seems to be a unanimous choice. The only question might be
his willingness to serve on this committee. We should go ahead and find
out about that. If he joins, that takes care of Xerox. If not, the
choices are probably Masinter, van Melle, or maybe Ken Kahn. Masinter
is the obvious choice from among those three on merit, unless people
feel he is still harboring a grudge of some sort. He would probably be
quite ticked if we chose one of the others, but couldn't complain if we
chose Bobrow.
I have great respect for Bawden, and if we were choosing strictly on
technical merit he'd have my vote. However, we've got to worry about
perceptions, and I'm not sure what camp he identifies with. Is he
connected with Symbolics at all, or is he strictly MIT? And how is he
viewed by such people as Greenblatt and Hewitt? The point is that
Greenblatt and Hewitt will both tend to raise hell if they feel
unrepresented, but having either of them (or Carette) on the committee
would be poisonous. So finding some respected MIT person who is
reasonable but is not viewed as a stooge of Symbolics is politically
important. Would Bawden fill this role? If so, let's go for him.
If not Bawden, maybe Rees or Clinger (though the l;atter is no longer at
MIT). Both are reasonable and, while they are deeply scheme-oriented,
seem to understand that there are good reasons why Common Lisp is not
Scheme.
Griss would be a good choice if he's interested in doing this. I think
he's gotten over his early desire to subset and bend Common Lisp so that
it could be implemented on top of PSL. Having someone from H-P is
politically useful.
Another constituency that might be worth including (though not
absolutely necessary) is Franz/Tektronix. The problem there is in
finding someone. I think that Fateman's beliefs (e.g. that not having a
standard would be just peachy, since it worked for Lisp 1.5) are just
too far from the rest of the community's for him to be a good choice. I
know very little about Foderaro, but would prefer him sight-unseen.
On the international front, we need to talk to mathis about just when
these guys get folded in, and how many of them there should be. Adding,
say Chailloux and Ida to the committee right away would be fine with me
WHEN and IF we can easily exchange netmail with them. From what I've
seen about Padgett and Fitch, they don't belong on a Common Lisp
committee. If we want to split into two groups, one for big Common Lisp
and one for some sort of subset, then probably all of these guys go with
the subset (plus Kessler).
Wegman? I dunno. The last time we talked, he still had a chip on his
shoulder about Common Lisp vs. VM. Do we really need an IBM guy? We'll
ahve some other industrial types, and other people keeping the world
safe for fixed instruction sets.
Hedrick is probably not a good choice just because he doesn't work well
with a group.
Kessler? I don't know him. Seems to me he is the ideal U.S.
representative to any subset effort that starts up.
McCarthy? Would he be active or just a figurehead? I don't know where
his head is at these days. Does he like Common Lisp, or does he pine
for something more mathematically elegant?
Barber? I haven't dealt with him technically. Is he any good? He's
probably the best choice if we need to take someone from Gold Hill.
I don't see anyone at DEC who would be terribly good. Gary Brown isn't
very technical, and both Walter vanRoggen and Paul the Greek have about
as many bad ideas as good ones. I don't see anyone very attractive at
DG or TI or Gould or Intermetrics either. There are competent people at
all of these places, but not language designers.
Meehan? Hmmm... he might be reasonable if we had no other schemers
aboard and wanted one. Of course, Steele knows a bit about Scheme, or
did at one time.
Pratt? Which Pratt is this working at LMI? Not Vaughan Pratt, I
assume.
Skef Wholey and Rob maclachlan would also be excellent choices, except
that they are CMU'ers and therefore would appear to be redundant with
me. Lots of other Symbolics and Lucid people as well.
So to me it looks like we should go for
Steele
Gabriel
Moon
Fahlman
Bobrow
Bawden (if he's not too much aligned with Symbolics)
Griss
and, when the time comes
Ida (or one of the Kyoto guys)
Chailloux
other international types
Would that look reasonable to everyone, if we could get all of those
people? We've got big companies, startups, and academics; original
Common Lispers and latecomers; microcoded and stock hardware of several
sorts. That selection might not please Greenblatt and Hewitt, and it
might not please DEC, TI, Tektronix, and IBM. But would it enrage them?
-- Scott
∂19-Dec-85 1522 RPG Committee Membership
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Bobrow and Xerox have been consulted, and I think he's willing
and Xerox is happy. Xerox does not want Masinter, nor do they
really want VanMelle.
I'm not sure what the steering committee does, so I don't know
who should be on it.
Moon has to be on the committee, but Weinreb is smoother. Weinreb
on the steering committee is probably good.
I quizzed Rees, and he might be interested - no committments on either
side as yet. Working by netmail helps him (and others) stomache the
possibility.
The Kyoto guys are too junior. Also, did you hear about their PROGV bug?
Chaillioux is a problem. He must be on the subset committee. On the
full committee he might be a problem to manage. He will be happy if
a formalist is on the CL committee. Rees can fulfill that role.
Kessler is good. He might be quiet, but we'll need someone both
in the subset and the fullset committees.
McCarthy likes Common Lisp. He will vote for whatever I tell him to
vote for, so that might be stacking it too much. Perhaps he can be
an `honorary' member?
I worry about Fateman for the same reasons (and more) that Fahlman does.
He doesn't forget a slight against him, and he seeks revenge. Foderaro
is technically ok, but seems to be a company man in the worst sense.
Greenblatt? He's possibly manageable. Any other opinions on him?
It's Dexter Pratt, not Vaughan.
There is no one at TI worth mentioning except Harry Tenant, who is
not a Lisper.
I don't know Ida, so cannot say much for or against him.
-rpg-
∂19-Dec-85 1631 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA European discussion
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 16:31:36 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 379025; Thu 19-Dec-85 19:32:10-EST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 19:32 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: European discussion
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12168433134.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <851219193221.1.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
The reason I'm worried is that, as I understand it, there will
presumably just be one ISO Lisp (maybe a nested subset family), not
several highly different ISO Lisps. If we enter the ISO forum hoping to
make Common Lisp be ISO Lisp, but Common Lisp can't be accepted without
the agreement of various Europeans who think that ISO Lisp ought to be
something very different from Common Lisp, then we may not get anywhere.
Are you saying that there could be several ISO Lisp efforts, each
working on defining very different Lisps? Are you sure, or should we
ask Mathis? I admit that I still have very little idea how all this ISO
stuff really works.
∂19-Dec-85 1703 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee membership
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 17:02:50 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 379046; Thu 19-Dec-85 19:57:30-EST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 19:57 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Committee membership
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12168447585.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <851219195738.3.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I find that I don't really know what the steering committee is, exactly.
What are its powers and responsibilities? Is it unrelated to the ISO
process, only part of the ISO process and not part of anything else, or
something in between?
One of Moon or myself can step down if it becomes necessary to make
other parties happy. However, I'd prefer to save this up for later in
the negotiation process rather than doing a "preemptive surrender". Let
them think that they twisted our arms, and then they'll feel they've
done their duty to "protect" their companies, and they'll go away happy
instead of insisting on putting George Carrette on the technical
committee and so forth. I do think we'll be forced into this at some
point, so it's OK if you want to plan for it internally, but outside the
quinquevirate let's still assume that all five of us are in, for now.
I've spoken with people here about Balzer, and Gabriel's impressions are
shared. I think we should try hard to keep him out of any position of
real control or responsibility. I'm not an experienced politician, but
I think it would be better to keep him involved in the CL stuff
somewhere, rather than try to evict him entirely and make an enemy of
him. Having him involved in the "services" without actually being on
the steering committee (whatever that is) might be the right compromise.
Ohlander does sound better than Balzer, from the little knowledge I
have. Gabriel has dealt with Ohlander extensively over the last few
years and so could tell us more.
I still think we should keep the steering committee small, and try to
make sure it doesn't also get into the game of "my company needs to be
directly represented". So far I haven't heard any objections to keeping
it small.
I don't know whether Masinter is harboring any grudges, but I have
generally found him to be difficult to deal with. He's hard to
understand. When he tries to explain technical points to me, I usually
can't see what he's getting at, I think because he doesn't maintain a
good model of what I know and what I don't know, the way a teacher has
to do. I've also found him to be even more opinionated than we are,
although that might just be an impression due to the communication
problem. I do, however, suspect that he is harboring a general grudge,
that he feels he's been forced into dealing with Common Lisp and he
doesn't want to. That's just a suspicion.
Bawden is not connected with Symbolics in any way. He worked at
Symbolics as a summer employee a few years ago, writing bignum code, and
that's the only connection he's ever had. As far as I know he has never
been in this building. I hardly ever see him any more, usually only at
parties. The mail he sends to Symbolics tends to be vicious and flaming
("it's been three years, and you still haven't done anything about my
favorite pet peeve number sixteen!"). So it's hard to see how anybody
could think that he represented Symbolics.
I agree that we had better have someone from HP. If you and Steele both
think Griss is a good choice, then it sounds good to me. I don't really
know him.
Perhaps our west coast representative could try to get together with
Fodorero somehow and sound him out. Unfortunately, Lucid and Franz are
apparently considered to be Competitiors, so it might be tricky, but who
am I to tell Gabriel about politics?
What was Wegman's complaint re VM? Was it technical things, like how
it's hard to do the Common Lisp I/O system on VM because VM's model of
I/O is so different? I am forced to admit that as long as we claim that
we're trying to make EBCDIC work and all that, maybe we really do have
to do something about IBM-oriented I/O. But maybe that's not what you
mean about Wegman.
The Pratt in question is Dexter Pratt. Maybe Moon remembers more than I
do about him. My memory tells me that at MIT, his job was to actually
assemble CADRs. I could be confusing him with someone else.
The list at the end of your message looks good. I suppose people from
those companies can be outraged no matter what we do. But given that we
don't want the committee to be too big, and that we need international
participation, there is a very limited number of slots available. I
don't see reasonable grounds for anyone to be outraged. That's probably
the strongest thing we can hope to say.
∂19-Dec-85 1826 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee Membership
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 19 Dec 85 18:25:05 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 379125; Thu 19-Dec-85 21:25:07-EST
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 21:25 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Committee Membership
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 19 Dec 85 18:22-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-ID: <851219212518.0.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Gee, I hope somebody knows what the steering committee does.
OK, if the Kyoto guys are junior then I think Ida would be a good
choice, from a political point of view. He's definitely very much
pro-Common Lisp, and is already trying to get it established as a
standard in Japan. He also was in charge of getting the Japanese
translation created (has anybody noticed any other translations yet?).
If we're going to be international, we need someone from Japan, and I
think he's the only remaining candidate.
In my experience, I have found Greenblatt to be a generally good person.
Although sometimes vague, if you keep asking him questions you can
usually figure out what he's talking about. However, he's generally
frustrating to work with. He gets strange ideas in his head and sticks
to them stubbornly. He is a great programmer in the sense of generating
lots of working code quickly, but he is a poor programmer in the sense
of elegance and style. It took us years, for example, to get him to
admit that there was some merit in using DO rather than PROG for
straightfowards iteration. We never got him to use 2-d arrays; he felt
they were inherently expensive, and always rolled his own out of 1-D
arrays. When I started working with him, he was a dyed-in-the-wool
assembly language programmer. He has definitely improved since then,
but the idea of him as a Lisp language designer still doesn't seem right
to me.
∂20-Dec-85 1203 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU European discussion
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 20 Dec 85 12:03:11 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 20 Dec 85 14:32:58-EST
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1985 14:20 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12168673594.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: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: European discussion
In-reply-to: Msg of 19 Dec 1985 19:32-EST from Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW at SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Well, if there's just one ISO Lisp and it's not us, or if we even have
to make major compromises, then we move on to plan B. I don't see why
that should be the case, however. Common Lisp and Scheme are easily as
different in their details and their goals as, say, Pascal and Ada. And
even if it must all be "Lisp", other languages have multiple levels, so
the French subset proposal (if it remains a subset) could fit in there
very nicely.
We'll have to discuss this with Mathis, but I think that our working
assumption is that we can propose multiple standards if that makes
sense.
-- Scott
∂20-Dec-85 1202 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee membership
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 20 Dec 85 12:02:40 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 20 Dec 85 14:32:55-EST
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1985 14:15 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12168672730.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: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Committee membership
In-reply-to: Msg of 19 Dec 1985 19:57-EST from Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW at SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
My understanding of the steering committee, from a brief discussion with
Mathis, is that it is their job to interface to ISO, to prepare
schedules and such, to deal the international politics as necessary, and
to do any other formalisms that have to be done. The key is that they
accept as their charter to get Common Lisp approved as defined by the
technical committee (us, plus whoever we add).
The strategy of holding Wienreb's withdrawal in reserve is an
interesting one. The argument on the other side is that if we come up
with this ourselves it will look like we're trying very hard to balance
this thing and be fair to everyone, rather than doing the bare minimum.
That might actually be better psychology, as it could take the wind out
of the sails of the opposition early rather than late. But I'm happy to
go with keeping all five of us as an initial proposal.
If we get Ohlander, Balzer isn't an issue. If we get Bobrow, Masinter
isn't an issue. Adding both Bawden and Rees looks like an inordinate
amount of skew toward MIT. I've got no real objection, and respect them
both, but it does look unbalanced to me.
Sounds like we're more or less agreed that neither Fateman nor Foderaro
is really a good choice. It's awkward not having anyone from the
Franz/Tektronix camp, especially since they feel left out and Fateman is
the type to bitch about that. But I guess we can't give people votes
just because they are complainers. If we have Bobrow and Griss aboard,
plus maybe Rees, they can't very well accuse us of excluding the
latecomers.
Wegman was just going around saying that his Lisp/VM was nicer than
Common Lisp in this and that respect, and pointing out all the places
where we blew it. Pure NIH, compounded by the fact that we didn't make
contact with those guys early enough to bring them aboard. (It never
occurred to me in those days that IBM might be interested in this
stuff.)
I don't know anything about Dexter Pratt. Seems to me that if someone
has never sent a message to Common Lisp and has no other claim to fame
(e.g. invented some other major Lisp), that's grounds for
disqualification. He'd be easier to deal with than Greenblatt (anyone
would be) but that's not sufficient.
-- Scott
∂21-Dec-85 1731 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Varia
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Dec 85 17:30:58 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sat 21 Dec 85 20:30:57-EST
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1985 20:30 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12169003165.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Varia
Does anyone have a netmail address that works for Chaillioux? (And is
that the way it is spelled?) How about Ida. I'd just like to see if we
can send them mail before we think too hard about how to relate to them.
If we can't send mail, we must avoid creating any structure that would
require them to be kept tightly in the technical-discussion loop.
It's probably time to start bouncing our ideas on committee structure
off Squires and Mathis, as well as just each other.
Is anyone planning to send mail to Common-Lisp describing what happened
at the meeting. I think that the people who didn't get there sort of
expect this. I'll do it if nobody else wants to.
-- Scott
∂21-Dec-85 2108 SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA Re: ISO etc
Received: from USC-ISI.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 21 Dec 85 21:07:51 PST
Date: 21 Dec 1985 13:28-EST
Sender: SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA
Subject: Re: ISO etc
From: Stephen L. Squires <SQUIRES@USC-ISI.ARPA>
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: squires@USC-ISI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISI.ARPA]21-Dec-85 13:28:53.SQUIRES>
In-Reply-To: The message of 18 Dec 85 2116 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
I will try to address each of the points you made:
1. I am sensitive to the Balzer issue. His role on Common LISP
standardization will be strictly in a supporting capacity since some
people in his division of ISI will be dealing with collecting and
preparing the validation suite. Balzer is not not interested in
being part of the standization process. I do expect him to be a
significant user of Common LISP as part of some projects in advanced
programming environments which are AI-based. The purpose of the CLF
presentation was to give an example of an advanced environment that
could benefit from an explicit object model in LISP.
2. I would like Ron Ohlander to be part of the small steering committee
that would help to guide the various Common LISP activities including
providing guidance to the validation work. The actual administrative
support including network mail and archieving and distribution services
will require the support of the computing center within ISI that is
currently part of Ron's responsibility.
3. The BBN Bfly issue continues to amaze me. They appear to be resisting
all attempts to make the Bfly useful that involve developing any system
software outside BBN. (I have a problem in taking direct action because
of the fact that this part of the project is currently the responsibility
of the infamous Engineering Applications Office.) A latter from LUCID
that describes the offer that you described addressed to me may help me
to document the situation and resolve it. I believe there needs to be
a graceful transition path from Common LISP workstations to the coarse
grain multiprocessors so that the developers can focus on the significant
issues. I have taken the position that this needs to be a high quality
implementation of LISP, should support message passing initially, and
needs to be available as soon as possible. The BBN approach is clearly
to high risk and too far off in the future to satisfy this need. What
BBN is currently involved in is parallel LISP research project which
is not coordinated with any technology base activities in IPTO.
4. Network access needs to be handled carefully because of the increasing
number of people that want to be on the network. The relation to Stanford
is a much better path than with ISI.
Thanks for your candid comments!
∂23-Dec-85 1014 RPG Varia on ISO
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I played some cards with Squires, and Balzer is jettisoned in favor
of Ohlander on the steering committee.
Chailloux's net address is:
mcvax!inria!chaillou@seismo.CSS.GOV
which works within 24 hours.
∂23-Dec-85 1044 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Varia on ISO
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 23 Dec 85 10:44:50 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 23 Dec 85 13:44:53-EST
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1985 13:44 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12169453530.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Varia on ISO
In-reply-to: Msg of 23 Dec 1985 13:14-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Congratulations on your card-playing. Presumably we still have to get
Ohlander to agree to this, and find some way of telling Balzer this
without making an ememy of him, but having Squires agree to this is a
start.
-- Scott
∂24-Dec-85 1207 RPG Committee members
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Why should someone be on the ISO committee? Clearly because he can
make a contribution and has an interest. Companies seem to think their
interest overrides their ability to provide someone of standing in the
Lisp community. Perhaps we should think in terms of credentials and
logical groups, making membership something very hard to achieve.
Special-purpose hardware:
These folks are represented by Moon, who is among the very best Lisp
people. LMI has no interest other than commercial that is not represented
by Symbolics.
Stock Hardware:
These folks are represented by me and by Fahlman. Lucid's technical interests
are the same as Franz's. Also, they have no one to offer technically. Recall:
They were the people who gave the world *FRANZ* *LISP*. Griss has always
been a nay-sayer and was only interested in making portable STANDARD Lisp the
COMMON Lisp. It is not evident he did much of the heavy-duty implementation,
either.
Universities:
Why do they need representation? Suppose they do; Fahlman represents them.
Groups with other interests, like OOP:
Bobrow represents a new view on OOP. He has long standing and high standing in
the community.
Groups who prefer small computers:
We need these folks to get by the Europeans. Chailloux can do that; so can
Kessler. Kessler also would like to make PSL the Common Lisp subset. It's
hard to tell how much real implementation he's done.
Formalists:
These guys can lend an air of respectability to the cause.
So, how about this:
RPG
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Rees (formalist)
Kessler
Chailloux
Bobrow
We ought to have more people, I guess. We can buy some credits by easing
DLW off the committee. I might suggest Wegman, but he might be too much to
handle. Also, Wegman would only represent the LISP/VM group and not IBM.
Corporate IBM regards them as out of the mainstream of IBM's Lisp interests.
So why bow towards that group at all?
TI? They have no one.
Gold Hill? They have no one.
Expertelligence? Give me a break.
Tektronix? Are you kidding?
If we leave DLW on the committee, we would have 9.
∂27-Dec-85 1501 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee members
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 27 Dec 85 15:01:49 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 27 Dec 85 18:01:50-EST
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1985 18:01 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12170548890.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Committee members
In-reply-to: Msg of 24 Dec 1985 15:07-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
I just got back from a few days with my family and saw Dick's analysis.
I basically agree with him that technical merit ought to be more
important than representing every group that might otherwise complain.
I would add just one twist to Dick's criteria, however: I think that
where a major constituency (such as stock hardware) is concerned, it is
best to have two obviously independent voices. That makes it hard to
say, "Well, the only stock hardware guys are from Lucid and we all know
that those guys have a weird point of view." Including both Moon and
Bobrow gives us two independent perspectives on microcodable machines,
with me providing part of a third one (from my work with the Perq).
The big hole that I see is someone who has done some practical
implementation work, preferably from industry, on stock hardware, and
who has nothing to do with Lucid. People would view me as coming from
the same direction, even though that is not altogether true. Griss
fills the bill here, and while he hasn't been all that active in Common
Lisp, he is not terribly hard to get along with. Other suggestions to
fill the same niche?
An issue I have been thinking a lot about is whether to follow Weinreb's
suggestion that we keep him on our proposed committee, for use as a
bargaining chip if we need one, or whether we should drop him ourselves.
The more I think about it, the more I think that we should have only one
hard-core Symbolics person in the group we propose. I've never liked
bargaining chips. We've told the community "Trust us. We'll do our
very best to come up with a committee that is as fair as we can make it,
while still keeping the size down and including only people of high
competence and standing in the community." A lot of people will look at
our proposal and, if it is reasonably fair, go away reasonably happy or
at least without a lot of sympathy for any complaints they may have. If
the list we produce seems self-serving, we might never have a chance to
bargain; people who are disgruntled might just give up on us. Or if we
do start making concessions, it might be hard to stop. I would much
prefer to produce a list that I am convinced is as fair as we can make
it, and then fight hard for that list. And I wouldn't feel good
fighting for both Moon and Weinreb, when so many of Symbolics' direct
competitors have nobody on the committee.
(Once again, this has nothing to do with Weinreb's talent, for which I
have great regard. The issue is solely one of double representation for
Symbolics; if Moon were not also on the committee, I would fight hard to
include Weinreb.)
So, RPG's list looks fine to me, excpet that we should add either Griss
or someone else from industry who does stock hardware implementations.
And we should discuss with Mathis (and eventually with Chailloux) how to
structure things so that one group thinks about Common Lisp and another
thinks about subsets or smaller languages. I don't know Rees or Bawden
well enough to know which of these we want most (or maybe both).
-- Scott
∂27-Dec-85 1553 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee members
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 27 Dec 85 15:53:43 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 382315; Fri 27-Dec-85 18:53:10-EST
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 85 18:54 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Committee members
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12170548890.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <851227185408.9.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
This all sounds good to me. I agree with your analysis about the
bargaining chip point.
I don't know where to come up with another good stock hardware Lisp
implementor who isn't already on the committee and doesn't work for
Lucid or Symbolics and isn't likely to in the near future. What stock
hardware Lisp exists such that it is at all serious, was done in
industry (or has been migrated out to industry), was not based heavily
on Spice, and isn't from Lucid? After rejecting individuals who we've
already been pretty down on, it seems that HP Common Lisp is the one
best qualified to fill your criteria. Politically, I think it makes a
lot of sense to have someone from HP, so that some other large company
besides Xerox is represented, although I agree that this is really
subsidiary to getting good technical representation.
Is Griss the only candidate? RPG feels that he's a "nay-sayer" and
mainly interested in PSL. HP clearly is going away from PSL towards CL,
and I don't know how Griss is affected by that. Who was the heavy-duty
implementor of HP's Common Lisp?
∂27-Dec-85 1700 RPG Chips
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Of course, because one plays one's trump card early doesn't make it
any less of a trump card. If we trim DLW out now, it probably has more
effect than if we cleverly do it later.
In my case, I will rely on the technical resources of Lucid to help me
with technical issues in our discussions, much as senators bring aids to
Meet the Press. Similarly, I would presume that DLW would still be as
involved in Common Lisp as ever.
I've worked with Griss often in the past; he has always been a little down
on Common Lisp, but mainly because of its size. He personally worked on
the precursor to PSL, which was a proto-PSL, not Standard Lisp. Benson
claims that he (EB) and a few others completely re-wrote this proto-PSL.
Benson claims that Griss was on top of everything that went on technically
in the re-implementation and that Griss could probably have fixed any
problems in it. I think this says a lot, because Benson, incidentally,
does not like Griss.
I'm happy having Griss. But does this mean we should flush Kessler?
Kessler is easier to get along with, but lighter-duty than Griss. Both
are PSLers.
So the list looks like:
Gabriel
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Griss
Rees
Chailloux
Bobrow
Ida
What about a Brit? There is Fitch, but, as I recall, he submitted a
paper to the last Lisp conference that was rejected (POPL took it, though).
He's into Scheme, 3-Lisp, dynamic binding, and closures over dynamic
variables. Can we deal with this? Also, what about Wegman?
I think the list above is pretty first-class (with the exception of the
first person on the list, who is only there because he can play politics).
-rpg-
∂27-Dec-85 2024 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Chips
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 27 Dec 85 20:24:04 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Fri 27 Dec 85 23:24:09-EST
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1985 23:24 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12170607566.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Chips
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 Dec 1985 20:00-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
My thanks to Weinreb for being so flexible on this.
The non-Lucid stock hardware implementations come from DEC, DG, H-P,
Tektronix/Franz, Intermetrics, Gould, Gold Hill...that's all I can think
of for now. Franz has some people who have at least participated in the
design discussions surrounding Common Lisp, but we've discussed those
problems. The others (except H-P) don't seem to have any good language
designers, though there are some decent compiler writers out there. All
of the above started from CMU's sources except for Gold Hill and
probably Franz.
The situation at H-P is a bit odd. The Common Lisp comes from a
compiler gorup at Fort Collins -- they just started from CMU's sources
and put some competent compiler jocks on the case, as far as I can tell.
No language design talent in that group, that I can see. But the H-P
Labs people have a number of good Lispers, of whom I would rate Griss
the one with the most experience and perspective. They've all been
stuck in PSL in the past, but now that H-P is committed to Common Lisp
and has a good one, I think they'll all come over to our point of view
rather quickly once they've wallowed in the language awhile.
Of course, we need to verify that Girss is interested in this, if we
decide that we actually want him. Same for Rees, I think.
If we have representatives from H-P and Xerox, I think that the other
big companies would be happy -- big companies are represented, and no
one big company has a monopoly.
I don't think Wegman is a good choice. He is a good implementor, but I
don't think he knows or likes Common Lisp, he has never participated in
meetings or netmail discussions, and I don't think that most of the
factions at IBM would be pleased to have him "representing" them. My
group at CMU probably has more to do with the future of Lisp within IBM
than Wegman/Yorktown does -- we're doing prototypes that will end up
being polished either by outside vendors or by development groups within
the product divisions. So my guess is that if we asked the higher-ups
at IBM what they would like from us, Wegman would not be at the top of
the list.
If this ends up being one big committee, we can't afford to have both
Griss and Kessler aboard (unless we add a couple of puppets of our own
to balance things out). But, depending on what Mathis has to say, I
think we may want to go with two distinct (but friendly) committees, one
to deal with (big) Common Lisp and the other to do a smaller Lisp. In
that case, we might move Ida, Kessler, and Chailloux, plus some others
to be named later, to the small-Lisp committee. Then the big-Lisp
committee looks like
Gabriel
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Griss
Rees
Bobrow
Or maybe it's all one committee formally, but we agree among ourselves
to specialize in this way.
I don't know any Brits who care about Common Lisp except purely as
spectators. Jeff Dalton from Edinburgh was at the conference as the
sole SERC (British NSF) observer, but he's not in a class with the
people listed above. Fitch would presumably only be interested in the
small-Lisp committee. All the Brits of any repute are into either
POP-whatever or Prolog. I'm not sure if we have to pick total unknowns
from various countries, but let's not worry about that until Mathis
tells us we have to.
-- Scott
∂29-Dec-85 0928 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee membership
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 29 Dec 85 09:28:47 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sun 29 Dec 85 12:28:53-EST
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1985 12:28 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171012568.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Committee membership
I think it is time that we move the discussion of committee membership
to the ISO mailing list. We need some input from Mathis on the
international issues, and I think that both he and Squires are probably
wondering what we're up to.
If the rest of you agree, I will compose a message to CL-ISO summarizing
our discussions so far.
I have opened up some correspondence with Chailloux about what he really
wants to do in the way of a subset and why, and also sounding him out on
whether he thinks the subset stuff should be done by a separate
committee. I haven't received his reply on this yet.
-- Scott
∂29-Dec-85 1220 Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committee membership
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 29 Dec 85 12:20:46 PST
Received: from EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 382580; Sun 29-Dec-85 15:19:54-EST
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 85 15:14 EST
From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Committee membership
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12171012568.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <851229151439.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1985 12:28 EST
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
If the rest of you agree, I will compose a message to CL-ISO summarizing
our discussions so far.
That's fine with me.
∂29-Dec-85 1334 RPG Committee
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I think we ought to chat with the folks we've tentatively outlined
as members to make sure they would agree to serve. Griss is very busy,
and he might assume that if we've asked him that we would accept a
substitute he named, which I would be disinclined to do - there is
no one else at HP with the stature we require. Rees expressed some
concern about the time committment. Chailloux would probably serve,
but one can not know whether he would prefer the subset committee
post instead.
I can send messages to each of these people, if you wish.
-rpg-
∂29-Dec-85 1535 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Committee
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 29 Dec 85 15:35:35 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sun 29 Dec 85 18:35:32-EST
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1985 18:35 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171079315.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Committee
In-reply-to: Msg of 29 Dec 1985 16:34-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
We obviously have to contact these people before we go public with any
list, but it seems to me that the proper order is first for the gang of
seven to decide who we want on the committee, and then to ask the
nominees if they want to serve. It's a bit awkward in some cases to ask
a person if he would be willing to serve, and then to decide that we
don't want the person after all. Probably Mathis and Squires just
rubber-stamp what we want to do, but they might have some ideas of their
own that we should hear before approaching poeple. I'd especially like
to hear what Mathis thinks about Chailloux and the French connection.
-- Scott
∂29-Dec-85 1601 RPG Order of events
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Ok, so is this the order of events?
1. Fill in Squires and Mathis on the technical committee
reasoning and people
2. Figure out the strategic committee
3. Figure out the subset committee
4. Ask the potential members
5. Announce on CL-Charter
-rpg-
∂29-Dec-85 2149 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Order of events
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 29 Dec 85 21:49:13 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 00:49:12-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 00:49 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171147340.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Order of events
In-reply-to: Msg of 29 Dec 1985 19:01-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Yeah, that's the order I would propose. Followed by step 6: ride out
the storm of complaints, and if any of them actually seem valid or
likely to sink the whole effort, make some adjustments.
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 0915 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Chips
Received: from THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 09:15:09 PST
Received: from yon by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Mon, 30 Dec 85 12:15:20 est
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 85 12:15 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Chips
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 27 Dec 85 20:00-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-Id: <851230121525.5.GLS@THINK-YON.ARPA>
(1) This list looks very good to me, except that I would also very much
like to get Bawden involved (maybe if Rees declines?).
Gabriel
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Griss
Rees
Chailloux
Bobrow
Ida
(2) I think Griss is overall very competent technically and fairly
reasonable to work with. There are great advantages to having a
representative of HP and of PSL. I don't think Kessler would be nearly
as good for the purposes of this committee.
(3) With respect to DLW, I also think that it is better just to try very
hard to do the right thing the first time than to give any appearance of
playing games. I too hope Dan will continue to be active. Inasmuch as
the committee discussions will probably be mostly open (that is, held on
the net), I think the only effect is that "Symbolics" will have one vote
on the committee instead of two when official votes are taken. In
particular, there is no reason that people who are not official
committee members but nevertheless make important contributions cannot
be appropriately recognized in reports.
(4) I am against trying to create a "subset committee ghetto" before the
fact. Interest in subsets is an important point of view that should be
represented on the main committee. (Furthermore, I think the subset
interests and the full-language interests ought to keep tabs on each
other.) If a certain part of the main committee naturally gravitates
into a corner to work separately on the subset issue, that's another
matter.
(5) It would be a nice gesture, if nothing else, to ask McCarthy. Also
it might make the committee much more credible on the international
scene to have the original inventor of the language on its roster. (As
a friend I would then advise him not to waste his time, but he might
really want to be involved. Let him decide.)
(6) Just as a suggestion from left field, what would you think of Robert
"Corky" Cartwright? He has served on the program committee for a Lisp
conference. He's a sharp semi-outsider who is fairly up on theory and,
as far as I can tell, has no axe to grind. (But he may not want to
invest the effort.) Scherlis could serve the same purpose, but then
there would be duplication from CMU. Cartwright would represent a
university outside the MIT/Stanford/CMU triangle.
In summary, I propose:
Gabriel
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Griss
Rees
Chailloux
Bobrow
Ida
McCarthy
Cartwright
Alternate: Bawden
which makes 11 members (my favorite size) and an alternate choice in
case one declines.
--Guy
∂30-Dec-85 0924 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Open meetings
Received: from THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 09:24:22 PST
Received: from yon by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Mon, 30 Dec 85 12:24:30 est
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 85 12:24 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Open meetings
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
Message-Id: <851230122435.6.GLS@THINK-YON.ARPA>
At both the Common Lisp meetings and the ANSI C meetings I have
attended, it is clear that something like 60% of the people are there
not really to contribute but to monitor the proceedings on behalf of
their companies to make sure they don't miss anything. (While they have
votes, they vote in very predictable ways, often with each following a
"leader" they perceive as having similar interests. Mostly it makes each
company feel good to think that they have a vote that could help to
defeat some outrageous proposal. In practice their votes have little
effect.)
It may help, in proposing a technical committee, to re-emphasize that
most of the committee discussions will be held by network, and all
interested parties will, in effect, have access to complete transcripts
of meetings. Therefore not having a representative on the committee
doesn't imply lack of access to information. (Got that?)
We will also have to have some kind of formal mechanism from the start
for distinguishing between "well, all the committee members seem to have
agreed on issue X" and "the following is the result of an official vote
of the technical committee and will be included in the next set of
language changes". We don't want people trying to track the meeting in
real time to feel that they were misled about which way the committee
was going to jump.
--Guy
∂30-Dec-85 0930 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Chips
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 09:29:57 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 12:30:01-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 12:29 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171274917.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: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Chips
In-reply-to: Msg of 30 Dec 1985 12:15-EST from Guy Steele <gls at THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Asking McCarthy sounds like a good suggestion. Couldn't hurt, and he is
certainly of sufficient stature in the Lisp world.
I've never heard of Corky Cartwright (which is probably my fault and not
his). As I said once before, I think that if a person has never shown
any signs of contributing to or even following the Common Lisp
discussion, he has to have some other credentials that are pretty
substantial. No amount of serving on program committees counts in my
book. Has Cartwright actually done something? What university does he
represent?
If we need to get to 11, maybe we go for both Rees and Bawden after all.
From what I know of these guys, they are not especially redundant and
are not working closely with one another. MIT can't be a power block,
since MIT people normally hate each other much more than they hate the
rest of the world, and most of the world knows that.
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 0936 RPG Cartwright
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I know him pretty well. He got a PhD from Stanford under McCarthy. He is
big on formal Lisp semantics. He is currently at Rice. He is very smart,
very well-spoken, understands the difference between formalisms and real
programming. He programmed up a theorem-prover for his thesis and has done
many other large projects. He has published a fair bit in the Lisp area.
I think he has the credentials to do a good job.
-rpg-
∂30-Dec-85 1020 RPG McCarthy
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I have a private chat with him. He does not want to be on
the technical committee, but he would be willing to be on the
strategic committee provided certain conditions are true:
1. It meets at least once
2. It doesn't meet often
3. Steele and I are on it
hm.
-rpg-
∂30-Dec-85 1100 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Cartwright
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 10:59:45 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 13:59:44-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 13:59 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171291251.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Cartwright
In-reply-to: Msg of 30 Dec 1985 12:36-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Well, from Dick's description Cartwright sounds OK. I am not a big fan
of formal semantics for anything, so I start out being skeptical of such
people, but if the person in question has a lot of big-project
experience, that is the proper antidote. There remains the question of
whether the person knows enough about Common Lisp to contribute and
whether he agrees with the idea of starting from the Steele book rather
than starting from scratch.
There's a larger problem, however, and that is the person's visibility
to the Common Lisp community, defined as roughly the set of people who
have been following the Common Lisp mailing list. We're need to be able
to say to people from various companies that the people on the technical
committee have a lot of experience both in language design and
implementation, and that we just didn't see anyone with those
credentials at Company X. Having an unknown on the committee
(especially when we can't list a couple of things that the person has
done that clearly show why he is qualified) makes it a lot harder to go
with this argument. Someone like Walter vanRoggen, say, might argue
that he is not in a class with Steele or Moon, but is at least as well
qualified to help decide the future of Common Lisp as Corky Cartwright,
whoever he is.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't take this guy, but we should think hard
about whether he really adds anything. You guys have been counting Rees
as the formalist -- is Cartwright stronger here?
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 1107 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU McCarthy
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 11:07:35 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 14:07:32-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 14:07 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171292669.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: McCarthy
In-reply-to: Msg of 30 Dec 1985 13:20-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Well, a strategy committee with
Mathis
Squires
Ohlander
McCarthy
Steele
Gabriel
sounds fine to me, especially if it is assumed that the first three do
all the dirty work and the last three keep them honest. Such a
committee could be "sold" to the world, I think, without raising the
spectre of repesentation by various companies. The credentials of each
are obvious: Mathis is the Convenor, Squires represents DARPA, Ohlander
is in charge of the service organization, McCarthy is God, Steele wrote
(and controls) the book, and Gabriel has organized all the meetings so
far. Who could object?
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 1122 RPG
∂30-Dec-85 0943 JMC re: Question about Common Lisp
[In reply to message rcvd 30-Dec-85 09:30-PT.]
While I might have a technical idea from time to time about what should be
in Common Lisp, I never followed the detailed discussions in the mailing
list. Therefore, I don't want to be on the Technical Committee. I am
willing to be on the Strategic Committee provided it meets at least once
but not too often (or at least I don't always have to attend)
and provided you and Guy are also on it.
∂30-Dec-85 1127 RPG Cartwright etc
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Scott's analysis is correct: we must keep the criteria such that
the committee is above reproach. As formalists, Rees is not in
the same league as Cartwright, but Rees has done several implementations
of Lisps. He even got Steele's S-1 compiler to really work, a feat only
equaled by myself.
With McCarthy out and Cartwright too, this leaves the committee
as:
Gabriel
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Griss
Rees
Chailloux
Bobrow
Ida
which has 9 people, my favorite number.
-rpg-
∂30-Dec-85 1139 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Cartwright etc
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 11:39:15 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 14:39:19-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 14:39 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171298453.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Cartwright etc
In-reply-to: Msg of 30 Dec 1985 14:27-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
OK, let's run this past the full ISO list, with Bawden as first
alternate. One problem I see is that as far as I know, we cannot
communicate reliably with Ida, so he couldn't participate fully until we
fix this somehow. We could go ahead and add him (after someone talks
with him and gets his permission), but the understanding would have to
be that we don't wait around for international airmail to do its thing
except on the most weighty of issues.
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 1259 DLW@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA Committees
Received: from SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 12:59:10 PST
Received: from CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM by SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA via CHAOS with CHAOS-MAIL id 383166; Mon 30-Dec-85 15:58:05-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 85 15:59 EST
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Subject: Committees
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <851230155910.6.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
This all sounds good to me, including both of the most recent lists
proposed for the two committees.
I agree with Steele that we should try not to make a "subset committee"
at this point. Even if the members gravitate towards various areas, it
would be much better, and look much better also, to have one committee.
I agree with RPG's mail about the order of events, and it looks like
it's about time to expand to the gang of 7. This quinquevirate list
will still be present if we want to talk among ourselves further.
I agree with Fahlman about formal semantics in the sense that real
theorists mean it. On the other hand, the present CLtL could stand to
be a tiny bit more in the direction of formality than it is now. I
don't mean we should start filling it with denotational semantics
(bleagh!), but notice how often someone sends mail about something, we
check the manual, and lo, it is ambiguous. (This is not intended as
criticism of Steele!) It's possible that having someone who is more
formally inclined would provide a nudge in the right direction. Rees
and Bawden are both highly qualified, since in addition to their formal
backgrounds, they've been involved in real-world implementations
extensively, and know the score. (Executive summary: I think the
current proposal looks good.)
Regarding communicating with Ida, I recently spent some time trying to
send mail to H. G. Okuno at NTT labs. I was not successful. Following
the paths he gave in his recent paper (the contest results), the mail
got as far as "kddlab", which returned it because it had never heard of
"nttmecl". I'm not sure what "kddlab" is, but KDD is sort of the
Japanese equivalent of ITT; they handle international phone calls, for
example. I'm not sure how to proceed to debug this further.
I agree with Steele strongly that when we present the committee to the
community, we re-emphasize that people will have access to information
even if they don't have a direct representative on the committee. This
could be very important in getting everyone to accept the structure.
∂30-Dec-85 1300 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Cartwright etc
Received: from THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 13:00:27 PST
Received: from yon by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Mon, 30 Dec 85 16:00:13 est
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 85 16:00 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Cartwright etc
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA, quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 30 Dec 85 14:27-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-Id: <851230160016.7.GLS@THINK-YON.ARPA>
Date: 30 Dec 85 1127 PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Scott's analysis is correct: we must keep the criteria such that
the committee is above reproach.
There is always the reproach that the committee is tightly ingrown; this
is what prompted my suggestion of Cartwright. He is outside the Common
Lisp clique but is aware of Lisp issues in general. He got his degree
at Stanford, and he spent a semester at CMU a couple of years ago (while
I was at Tartan). Scherlis knows him well. Besides having papers in
POPL and TOPLAS, Cartwright had papers in the 1980 Lisp Conference and
the 1982 Lisp Conference, and served on the program committee for the
1984 Lisp conference.
I say all this not because I want to push very hard for him to be on the
committee, but merely to press home the point, for future reference,
that he is a good guy that has been involved with Lisp more than you
might think, just not in the hard-core implementation arena.
As formalists, Rees is not in
the same league as Cartwright, but Rees has done several implementations
of Lisps. He even got Steele's S-1 compiler to really work, a feat only
equaled by myself.
Hm.
With McCarthy out and Cartwright too, this leaves the committee
as:
Gabriel
Fahlman
Moon
Steele
Griss
Rees
Chailloux
Bobrow
Ida
which has 9 people, my favorite number.
That's a fine number, too, even though it isn't prime.
-rpg-
--Q
∂30-Dec-85 1702 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Cartwright etc
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 17:02:34 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 20:02:37-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 20:02 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171357311.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: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Cartwright etc
In-reply-to: Msg of 30 Dec 1985 16:00-EST from Guy Steele <gls at THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
There is always the reproach that the committee is tightly ingrown; this
is what prompted my suggestion of Cartwright. He is outside the Common
Lisp clique but is aware of Lisp issues in general.
The gang of five is certainly ingrown, but I don't think that any
committee containg such people as Bobrow, Griss, and Rees could be
considered ingrown. To me the question is whether we can include
someone with good academic credentials but who has so far shown no
interest at all in Common Lisp or its immediate precursors when we are
excluding people who have done implementations and who have offered lots
of suggestions (even if they were dumb suggestions).
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 1715 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Steer is to Bull as Steering Committee is to ...
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 30 Dec 85 17:15:28 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 30 Dec 85 20:15:32-EST
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1985 20:15 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12171359665.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Steer is to Bull as Steering Committee is to ...
Before I send anything off to CL-ISO, it might be good to hear from RPG
and GLS about their degree of interest in joining McCarthy on the
steering committee. If you guys don't want to do this, then maybe we
just propose Squires/Mathis/Ohlander and let it go at that, but I kind
of like the idea of having McCarthy and some technical types on that
group, just to keep an eye on things. Squires can sometimes be a loose
cannon on the deck.
-- Scott
∂30-Dec-85 2119 RPG Don't say ``Steer,'' say ``Bull.''
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I am perfectly happy being on the steering committee with JMC and GLS,
assuming it is legal. Mathis, Ohlander, and Squires together, and alone,
on that committee would be no better than the Three Stooges. With
JMC, Steele, and I, it will be more like the Marx Brothers or the
Keystone Kops.
-rpg-
∂31-Dec-85 1657 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Steerage
Received: from THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 31 Dec 85 16:57:37 PST
Received: from wenceslas by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Tue, 31 Dec 85 17:35:56 est
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 85 17:36 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Steerage
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
Message-Id: <851231173622.4.GLS@THINK-WENCESLAS.ARPA>
I'm willing to do it, I guess, and hope that it doesn't take much time
relative to the technical stuff.
--Guy
∂05-Jan-86 1506 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Membership in committees
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 5 Jan 86 15:06:30 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Sun 5 Jan 86 18:06:43-EST
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1986 18:06 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12172909075.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Membership in committees
Happy new year!
Well, the disruptions of the holiday season are over, and it is now time
for us to get to work on putting these committees together. Those of us
in the original gang of five have been kicking around some ideas both by
mail and in person, and the proposed membership lists that I present
below seem pretty good to us.
At this point, we need to discuss this among the full gang of seven, and
especially to get any input that Bob Mathis may want to contribute about
the requirements for non-U.S. membership in these committees. The next
step is to contact all of the people we want to nominate -- I'll
indicate below which people have already expressed a willingness to
serve and which have not yet been contacted. Then, once we have a set
of people willing to serve, we announce this to the rest of the Common
Lisp community and see if a firestorm ensues. My guess is that if we do
our job well a few people around the edges will grumble a bit, or maybe
a lot, but that there will be no substantial opposition.
First, some proposals for the steering committee:
Bob Mathis
Steve Squires
Ron Ohlander
John McCarthy
Guy Steele
Dick Gabriel
It was earlier proposed that the steering committee be a very small one,
perhaps just with Mathis, Squires, and either Ohlander or Balzer. (All
of us in the gang of five greatly prefer Ohlander, who will be the
person most directly responsible for the support effort at ISI.) The
idea of going with a larger committee is that the first three people on
the list will deal with most of the hard-core political issues, while
the other three lend technical perspective as needed and provide a lot
of extra clout within some segments of the community. I think that this
is a good setup.
McCarthy is the inventor of Lisp, so his presence blunts any possible
argument that Common Lisp is somehow illegitimate or that we have
dirfted too far from what Lisp was originally meant to be. McCarthy
said that he had no interest in being on the technical committee, but
that he would join the steering committee if Steele and Gabriel were
also on it. And after thinking about this, it seems like the right set
of people. Steele wrote the book, and is therefore the name most
closely associated with Common Lisp by the user community; he will also
be the interface to Digital Press if one is needed. Gabriel has
generally been the most politically active member of the gang of five:
he has set up the various meetings, he has been the principal interface
with DARPA people, he helped to bring various companies into the fold,
etc.
So I think that this is a group that nobody could object to, and that
has the kind of clout we might need if the foreigners (or certain U.S.
companies) try to put obstacles in our way. There is no way to claim
that this group is representative of the whole community, but that isn't
important for this committee.
Now for the technical committee:
First some criteria.
Not every company interested in Common Lisp can have someone on the
technical committee, but we did want to represent all of the major
segments of the community: specialized Lisp machines, general purpose
machines, universities, big companies, small companies, newcomers to the
fold, people who want to think about subsets, people from outside the
U.S., and so on.
We wanted to include only people who understand both language design and
implemenation issues as they relate to Lisp, who have demonstrated some
interest in and overall approval of Common Lisp, and who are reasonably
well known within the Common Lisp community. It is NOT necessary that
these people were major contributors to the Common Lisp discussions --
there is not way to get broad representation if we make that
restriction.
We want people who can, to some extent at least, set aside their own
parochial interests for the good of the overall effort. A lesser, but
still real consideration, is the ability of the person to work as part
of a team; we can't expect to make much progress if the committee is
full of people with some particular axe to grind, and who will hold a
grudge if they don't get their way on some issue. In several cases, we
really wanted to include someone from particular companies, but couldn't
find anyone who has both the stature and the ability to compromise when
necessary.
Everyone on the committee must be able to communicate reliably with the
rest of us by netmail. This may be a problem for the overseas guys: we
can apparently reach Chailloux in France OK, but so far have had little
luck in communicating with Japan.
We thought that it would be very poor politics to include two people
from Symbolics when we are telling several other companies that they
can't have their own delegate on the committee. Consequently, Dan
Weinreb has agreed to step down, for now at least. Of course, we hope
that Weinreb will continue to be active in all our discussions, which
will almost all take place in the open via the Common Lisp mailing list
or something similar. In fact, an important part of selling this whole
thing to the companies not represented is to make it clear that the
discussions will be open, and only the final decisions will be in the
hands of the technical committtee alone.
So here is what we think might fly:
Scott Fahlman, CMU
Dick Gabriel, Lucid
Dave Moon, Symbolics
Guy Steele, Thinking Machines
Danny Bobrow, Xerox
Martin Griss, H-P
Jonathan Rees, MIT
Jerome Chailloux, INRIA
Masayuki Ida, Aoyama Gakuin University
The four members of the gang of five are obvious.
Bobrow is extremely prestigious as one of the original players in the
Interlisp and Tenex worlds, and he is now an important voice in the
object-oriented programming debates. It is politicially quite useful to
have someone from Xerox aboard, and Bobrow is by far the best choice
there -- some of the others still seem to be bitter about Common Lisp's
success againts Interlisp. Apparently he has indicated a willingness to
serve on this committee if asked, and the management people at Xerox
are eager to have him do this.
Griss is a less obvious choice, but he has a lot of experience in
implementing Lisp efficiently on conventional machines. He has been a
proponent of using the smaller PSL over Common Lisp, but H-P has now
swung its considerable weight into the Common Lisp camp and Griss seems
quite willing to go along with this. We felt that we needed one more
guy from a big company (H-P, IBM, DEC, TI ...) and after we rule out
people who are basically hostile to Common Lisp, Griss seems to be the
person with the best technical reputation. Having someone aboard from
H-P specifically is also quite useful, as many of the other big
companies have close ties either to Lucid or to our group at CMU; H-P is
pretty independent, and is building a big Lisp-based research
organization at H-P Labs. [We have not talked to Griss and he may not
be willing to put in the time for this; if he won't, we may have trouble
finding a good second choice to fill this niche, since there is nobody
else with comparable credentials at H-P.]
Jonathan Rees is most closely associated with T Lisp, a dialect of
Scheme, but he seems to understand that Common Lisp has different goals
from Scheme and that it is appropriate that it be larger and more
complex. We all respect his taste in language design and his skills as
an implementor. He is also something of a formalist, which will make
the committee look better in some peoples' eyes. Rees has expressed
some interest in serving on this committee, but also some reservations
about the time it might take. If he declines, a good alternative might
be Alan Bawden -- if they were not both at MIT, we would probably want
them both aboard.
It is not clear to us exactly at what point we should put international
members on the committee, but Chailloux is the most obvious non-U.S.
candidate. He has strong implementation credentials as the developer of
Le Lisp, and has some strong ideas about creating a standard Common Lisp
subset -- a topic that some of us feel should be explored in any event.
He may be a bit hard to deal with when disagreements arise, but he will
certainly cause us less trouble on the committee than if he feels he was
unfairly excluded by a U.S. political steamroller.
The Japanese make a lot of noise about Prolog in public, but there is
great interest in Common Lisp in some of the big Japanese companies.
They will be important players in this game and should be represented,
though they might be content just to follow the U.S. lead. Masayuki Ida
seems to be the obvious person: he translated the Common Lisp manual
into Japanese, and is the chairman of the JEIDA Common Lisp Committee.
(I'm not sure what role JEIDA plays, but it sounds like Ida is the
central coordination point for Common Lispers in Japan, if not their
actual leader.) He, too, has some ideas about subsets. I have a hunch
that Ida would be happy to serve on this committee, but we have not yet
been able to establish two-way mail contact with him. If we cannot do
this, we may have to make him an honorary commitee member for awhile; we
cannot afford to hold up all decisions while we wait for snail mail to
do its thing. The other Japanese we know are either too junior (more
important to them that to us) or are closely associated with one company
or another.
We have not identified anyone appropriate in Britain, West Germany, or
other such places.
My guess is that if all these people agree to serve and we announce this
committee to the rest of the community, it will go over pretty well.
LMI and the Franz Lisp people will complain a bit, as will Carl Hewitt
who keeps claiming that he has some legal right to be included in
everything that is going on. We thought about what could be done to
placate these people, but there really is nobody reasonable for this
committee in any of their organizations. By dropping Wienreb and
including some neutrals, we give them at least something to feel good
about. I think that fair outside observers will feel that these
complaints are not well-founded, so they will eventually fade away. I'm
sure that DEC, TI, IBM, and some of the other big companies will be a
bit concerned about not having their own poeple aboard, but if we stress
that the committee members are trying hard not to represent companies
and that all the discussions will be public, I think they'll all agree
that this is about the best we can do without growing the committee to
30 members.
Well, that's our first pass at this. Comments are solicited. Also,
please keep us informed about any progress in setting this up within
ISO.
-- Scott
∂06-Jan-86 1726 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Moving forward
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 6 Jan 86 17:26:20 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 6 Jan 86 20:26:36-EST
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1986 20:26 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12173196684.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Moving forward
I assume you all got copies of the letter I sent to CL-ISO. Please feel
free to pop up with corrections or amplificiations if you think that I
misrepresented anything.
It looks like Squires and Mathis do not feature one-day turnaround on
mail messages. Rather than wait around for word from them, it might be
best to sound out Griss and Rees (and Boborow?) about their interest in
being on the committee, without actually making any offers. While the
time demands of being on this committee will be significant, we might
also mention that it can vary from person to person. The minimum
requirement is that the member must follow and think about all the mail
that goes by, must get to any meetings (which I for one will fight hard
to minimize), and must vote when we have to take a vote. Some of us
will have the heavier task of moderating the discussion, answering any
mail that nobody else answers, and keeping track of the results; I'd
like to spread that task around among more people, but we don't have to
dump it on the new guys right way.
Dick, do you want to do this?
We'd batter wait to hear from Mathis before contacting the foreigners.
-- Scott
∂07-Jan-86 0837 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU [SQUIRES: Membership in committees]
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 7 Jan 86 08:37:21 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 7 Jan 86 11:21:09-EST
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1986 11:21 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12173359534.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: [SQUIRES: Membership in committees]
It looks like Squires just sent this to me, though it may also have
gone to the rest of you. Anyway...
Date: Monday, 6 January 1986 22:24-EST
From: Stephen L. Squires <SQUIRES at USC-ISI.ARPA>
To: Fahlman
cc: Squires at USC-ISI.ARPA
Re: Membership in committees
This is an excellent initial proposal and rationale.
I am in favor of having Ohlander on the steering committee because of
both his historical involvement at DARPA and the role he will have at ISI.
I also believe that your rationale for the expanded steering committee
is a good one, including the intersection with the technical committee
because it provides a very effective bridge between the two. The fact
that John McCarthy is willing to participate is a wonderful.
Very careful consideration should be given to the technical committee.
I like the idea of taking the first step at making it international
from the beginning.
At what point should we have a "formal" meeting of at least the US people.
It might be useful to get the small group together (perhaps at DARPA)
so that Director, IPTO could meet them and discuss the plans to
make the next part of standardization happen. This would also be the
time to work out the draft work plan that Mathis needs to put
together for the ISO activities.
∂07-Jan-86 0942 RPG Rees, Griss, and Bobrow
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I've checked with Bobrow orally, and he is willing. I will
re-probe Rees (I did so earlier). I will contact Griss.
-rpg-
∂09-Jan-86 1401 JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ISO Commitee Membership
Received: from MIT-MC.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 9 Jan 86 13:20:15 PST
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 86 16:19:06 EST
From: Jonathan A Rees <JAR@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: ISO Commitee Membership
To: RPG@SU-AI.ARPA
In-reply-to: Msg of 07 Jan 86 0944 PST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Message-ID: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].778591.860109.JAR>
Date: 07 Jan 86 0944 PST
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
To: jar at MIT-MC.ARPA
Re: ISO Commitee Membership
It is almost certain that you will be asked to serve on the Common Lisp
ISO committee. If you would decline, we would want to think hard about a
substitute for you, and perhaps the identity of the qualified candidates
would force us to alter the rest of the committee to keep a reasonable
balance.
Therefore, we would like to know that if the committee we name is
asked, it will serve; and we would like to know this before we name the
committee. As I mentioned, almost all the work will be by netmail,
with only a couple of face-to-face meetings, perhaps 1 a year.
After a certain amount of internal agonizing, I have determined that the
answer is that if asked to serve, I would not decline.
Jonathan
∂09-Jan-86 1404 RPG Rees
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Jonathon says he will serve if asked. The only unknown American is
Griss. His lack of response could mean he's away often enough now that
he cannot adequately serve. We shall see.
-rpg-
∂09-Jan-86 1512 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Rees
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 9 Jan 86 15:12:02 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 9 Jan 86 18:12:15-EST
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1986 18:12 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12173958659.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Rees
In-reply-to: Msg of 9 Jan 1986 17:04-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Thanks for following up on Rees. I wouldn't let Griss's
non-responsiveness in any particular week bother me too much, but if
he's generally non-responsive to mail that is more serious.
Has anyone heard anything from Mathis? I'm thinking of trying the
telephone (yecch!) if we don't hear from him soon. Maybe the French
sent a team of frogmen to blow him up.
-- Scott
∂15-Jan-86 1755 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Bob Mathis
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 15 Jan 86 17:55:01 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 15 Jan 86 20:55:11-EST
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1986 20:55 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12175561184.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Bob Mathis
I managed to catch Bob Mathis by phone today. He still exists. He had
some problems in sending outgoing messages to the arpanet, and also felt
that he wanted to discuss some stuff with Squires before getting back to
us on committees and schedules and things. He finally caught Squires,
and will be sending us a bunch of ideas as soon as he gets them written
up. He basically likes the committee we proposed.
I emphasized to him the importance of staying in closer contact with us
via netmail.
Has anyone heard from Griss yet? Should I try to phone him?
-- Scott
∂16-Jan-86 1132 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Standard for Common LISP
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 16 Jan 86 11:30:58 PST
Date: 16 Jan 1986 11:31-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Standard for Common LISP
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]16-Jan-86 11:31:11.MATHIS>
Yes there still is a Bob Mathis on the net.
I have met with Cathy Kachurik of X3 about setting up an American
National committee for Common LISP under them. That seems to be
the best way to go. It appears that it will eventually be known
as X3J13, but we can make that lucky.
Steve Squires, Scott Fahlman, and I talked yesterday and feel
that a January meeting is not necessary. I have some notes on
planning that I will send to each of you. A February meeting is
possible if you think we need one.
Other messages will follow in the next couple of days. If you
ever want to call me: (703)425-5923.
Bob Mathis
∂20-Jan-86 1307 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Schedule for approval of standards committee
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 20 Jan 86 13:06:55 PST
Date: 20 Jan 1986 13:07-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Schedule for approval of standards committee
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]20-Jan-86 13:07:05.MATHIS>
DRAFT Schedule for the formation and approval of a new X3
Technical Committee for the standardization of Common LISP
(tentatively X3J13) (as of January 20, 1986):
1 February Documents to SPARC
2 March 18 SPARC Meeting
3 March 27 X3 Ballot out for "30 days"
4 May 2 X3 Ballot closes
5 May 27 Status Resolved
6 May 28 Press Release & Meeting Announcement
7 September First Meeting
8 November Second Meeting
9 November X3 Ballot on Officers
10 December 30 Organization Complete
1 February Documents to SPARC
SPARC is the Standards Planning and Requirements Committee of X3.
It is the first committee which must approve the formation of any
new technical committees. It is also the committee which annually
reviews the work. Documents have to be sent out to SPARC members
at least two weeks before the meeting. The January 21, 1986
meeting was too soon.
Once we have sent in the proposal, I think we should go "public"
with our intention to form this X3 Technical Committee. As long
as we are clear about its status, we should have no problems.
Mathis can serve as a focal point for information and
contributions. This will also be a place for everyone who might
be interested, but was not included on the technical or steering
committees.
2 March 18 SPARC Meeting
This meeting will be in Washington and Mathis can meet with them
sometime during their four day meeting. If two-thirds of the
committee approve, then the recommendation is forwarded to X3 for
a letter ballot.
3 March 27 X3 Ballot out for "30 days"
X3 letter ballots are normally mailed on Thursdays with the 30
day count starting the next Wednesday; this makes about a five
week period. Two-thirds of the members must approve.
4 May 2 X3 Ballot closes
If there are any negative votes, everyone is given 10 days to
reconsider their vote. The technical committee can still be
approved with negative votes, but the issues raised will have to
be addressed by the committee.
5 May 27 Status Resolved
If there were any negative votes, the supplemental response time
will have closed by now.
6 May 28 Press Release & Meeting Announcement
X3 Secretariat issues press release announcing the approval of
the technical committee, information about membership, and notice
of the first meeting (which must be at least six weeks away).
7 September First Meeting
An early september date is best for the first official meeting of
the new X3-J? committee on Common LISP. This will allow plenty of
time for publicity, membership solicitation, and planning. It
also comes after the LISP meeting in Boston, August 4-6.
The first meeting will be held at CBEMA, 311 First St, NW,
Washington, DC 20001. Mathis will serve as convenor and acting
chairman. The agenda will include a discussion of the standards
process with a focus on the role and responsibilities of this
technical committee. By this time there should also be a set of
initial working documents, a detailed plan of work, and a meeting
schedule; work should begin on all these things now, but this is
the committee's time to accept and make it their own.
8 November Second Meeting
At or after the second meeting officers can be nominated for
ballot by X3. There should be a Chairman, Vice Chairman,
Secretary, and International Representative (IR). Normally the
Chairman and Vice Chairman are chosen to have complementary roles
in leading the technical work and administering the standards
effort. One of the first three officers must be responsible for
maintaining the document register, membership list, and
communication with X3. One of the other officers can serve as IR
initially. For most technical committees, it has been difficult
to find people willing to take on these responsibilities.
Candidates must have a statement of management support and a
resume of expertise. They are elected for a three year term.
These people can also have leadership roles in the ISO working
group.
9 November X3 Ballot on Officers
X3 has a "30 day" (five week) ballot on the officer candidates.
10 December 30 Organization Complete
∂20-Jan-86 1331 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Standardization of Common LISP
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 20 Jan 86 13:31:27 PST
Date: 20 Jan 1986 13:31-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Standardization of Common LISP
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Mathis@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]20-Jan-86 13:31:36.MATHIS>
To all who receive this message (or should have), I would like to
have addresses for physical mail and phone numbers. When I put
together formal packages, I would like to be able to send you
copies.
In my other message I sent a draft schedule for the approval of
an X3 technical committee for Common LISP standardization. I
have tried to explain the steps there. This will be the public
committee in the United States. The technical committee we have
discussed will report to them for formal approval in the
standards committee sense. In forming a standard, it is
important that everyone has had a chance to participate and have
their concerns addressed. This public committee is for that
purpose. The intent is to achieve consensus on a technically
sound and acceptable standard; not to decide things by majority
vote.
The ISO proposal can go forward at about the same time.
X3 committees are open to international membership. If we want
the technical committee to really represent the technical
community, there should be some non-US members on it. Scott
Fahlman and I talked on the phone and are in agreement on the
people suggested in his 5 Jan message on "Membership in
Committees". Ron Ohlander is the one who should be on the
steering committee. Bob Balzer and Ron Ohlander both expressed
an interest to me and I was the source of the confusion about
their roles. If we are all agreed, who should invite these
people to join?
I am drafting the proposal to SPARC. You should see it in a
couple of days.
Bob Mathis
∂20-Jan-86 1408 RPG Asking non-US citizens to join
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
I will ask Jerome Chailloux.
-rpg-
∂20-Jan-86 1508 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Asking non-US citizens to join
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 20 Jan 86 15:08:27 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 20 Jan 86 18:08:36-EST
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1986 18:08 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12176841566.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Asking non-US citizens to join
In-reply-to: Msg of 20 Jan 1986 17:08-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
Sounds like a good plan. You seem to know Chailloux better
than the rest of us and get along with him.
Still no response from Griss?
-- Scott
∂20-Jan-86 1518 RPG Griss
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
I re-probed Griss today, and here is his response:
Sorry, I got sidetracked with priority things. My time is not as much
my own as it used to be in the Unviersity (a fact I noticed whn I
tried to be a reviewer for last Lisp conf..). What sort of time
commitment are we talking about?.
∂20-Jan-86 1746 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Griss
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 20 Jan 86 17:46:08 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 20 Jan 86 20:46:20-EST
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1986 20:46 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12176870288.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Griss
In-reply-to: Msg of 20 Jan 1986 18:18-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
As a possible answer to Griss, let me suggest the following: I think
that the minimum time commitment for being on the technical committee is
the time it takes to read all of the mail that goes by on the list, and
to think about what is being said at least enough to know whether you
disagree with the rest of us. (And, of course, if you do disagree or
want to add something, the time it takes to compose a message.) Plus
the time it takes to get to the face-to-face meetings, which I fervently
hope will be as few and as short as possible -- no more than two a year,
and I'd like to see us go for one. Griss can see how much mail goes by
and that it goes in waves, so he can estimate for himself how much time
it would take. My guess would be maybe two or three hours a week -- I
spend about twice that, I think.
Obviously, this thing would not fly if all of us put in just that
minimum amount (someone has to venture opinions for the others to
agree or disagree with, collect the results, etc.), but I would favor
having Griss aboard if he could find time for just the minimum.
-- Scott
∂22-Jan-86 1032 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA SPARC proposal
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Jan 86 10:32:20 PST
Date: 22 Jan 1986 10:32-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: SPARC proposal
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]22-Jan-86 10:32:24.MATHIS>
Gentlemen, Thanks for your replies to my previous message.
Here is the beginning of filling out the proposal to SPARC. What
I need you to think about is the scope of the standard and the
plan of technical work (what to expect when). For most of you
skipping the rest of this message would make sense.
-- Bob Mathis
1 Identification of Proposed Project
1.1 Title
Common LISP
1.2 Proposer(s)
Robert F. Mathis, 9712 Ceralene Drive, Fairfax, VA 22032,
(703)425-5923, on behalf of the Common LISP Community.
The Common LISP Community is an informal group of people who are
implmenting and using Common LISP and who correspond with each
other over the ARPA Net. They occasionally meet as they did in
Boston, December 9-11, 1985. At that meeting they decided that a
national and international standards effort was appropriate and
endorsed Robert Mathis to be the leader and organizer of that
effort.
1.3 Date Submitted
February 1, 1986
2 Justification of Proposed Standard
2.1 Needs
LISP is the second oldest programming language still in currentuse. During its life numerous extensions and incompatable
versions have been tried. In 1982, an effort was begun under the
auspecies of the Spice Project at Carnegie-Mellon University and
sponsored by DARPA to define a new commonly acceptable version of
LISP. 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 and features incorporated as appropriate.
2.2 Recommended Scope of Standard
2.3 Existing Practice in Area of Proposed Standard
Most of the LISP oriented suppliers (both hardware and software)
are moving toward Common LISP, either as their principle version
of LISP or as an option. DARPA and other agencies in the DoD are
insisting on Common LISP as the version of LISP to be used on
their projects.
2.4 Expected Stability of Proposed Standard with Respect to Current
Quoting from the Introduction" to Common LISP: The Language, "It
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
is intended that Common LISP will change only slowly and with due
deliberation. The various dialects that are supersets of Common
LISP may serve as laboratories within which to test language
extensions, but such extensions will be added to Common LISP only
after careful examination and experimentation." (p. 3)
3 Description of Proposed Project
3.1 Definitions of Concepts and Special Terms (if any)
3.2 Expected Relationship with Approved X3 Reference Models
3.3 Recommended Program of Work
3.3.1 Base Documents
3.3.2 Time/Milestone Schedule
3.3.3 Potential Participants
Some leaders in the Common LISP Community have already been
identified who are willing to serve: John McCarthy, Stanford
(inventor of Lisp); Guy Steele, Thinking Machines (author of
Common LISP: The Language); Scott Fahlman, CMU; Dick Gabriel,
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
Lucid; Dave Moon, Symbolics; Steve Squires, DARPA; Ron Ohlander,
USC-ISI; and Bob Mathis, Private Consultant. Other people we also
expect to be involved include: Danny Bobrow, Xerox; Martin Griss,
H-P; Jonathan Rees, MIT; Jerome Chailloux, INRIA; and Masayuki
Ida, Aoyama Gakuin University. We have not identified anyone
appropriate in Britain, West Germany, or other countries.
3.4 Resources -- Individuals and Organizations Competent in Subject
3.5 Recommended X3 Development Technical Committee (Existing or New)
3.6 Anticipated Frequency and Duration of Meetings
3.7 Target Date for dpANS to X3 (Milestone 10)
3.8 Estimated Useful Life of Standard
4 Implementation Impacts
4.1 Impact on Existing User Practices and Investments
4.2 Impact on Supplier Products and Support
4.3 Techniques and Costs for Compliance Verification
4.4 Legal Considerations
5 Closely Related Standards Activities
5.1 Existing Standards
5.2 X3 Standards Development Projects
5.3 X3/SPARC Study Groups
5.4 Other Related Domestic Standards Efforts
5.5 ISO Standards Development Projects
5.6 Other Related International Standards Development Projects
5.7 Recommendations for Close Liaison
∂22-Jan-86 1123 RPG Hold it right there!
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
I don't like to be picky, but this paragraph is full of lies:
``LISP is the second oldest programming language still in current use.
During its life numerous extensions and incompatable versions have been
tried. In 1982, an effort was begun under the auspices of the Spice
Project at Carnegie-Mellon University and sponsored by DARPA to define a
new commonly acceptable version of LISP. The resulting book Common LISP:
The Language by Guy Steele ...''
During 1982, Steele's efforts on the Common Lisp design document were
funded by LLNL. At the moment, LLNL is in the mood to not be upset at the
outcome, but a statement like this might convince them otherwise.
Also, I would say that many parts of the Common Lisp community would feel
slighted and cheated by finding out that Common Lisp was designed by the
Spice Project at CMU under DARPA funding, when one could just as easily say
that it was started at Stanford in the Formal Reasoning Group and sponsored
by DARPA, or that it was started at LLNL in the S-1 Group and sponsored
by the Navy.
One can quibble that the wording of the statement, under a second and
closer inspection, does not say what I claim it does, but it certainly
strikes people that way on first reading. I believe that a much more
politic statement could be made, and said statement can also give enough
credit to DARPA to justify it happy attitude about Common Lisp.
In the spirit of the Common Lisp effort, I propose a re-wording:
LISP is the second oldest programming language still in current use.
During its life numerous extensions and incompatable versions have been
tried. In 1981 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, but
the coordination of the effort and the bulk of the writing was done under the
auspices of the Spice Project at Carnegie-Mellon University and sponsored
by DARPA. The resulting book Common LISP: The Language by Guy Steele ...
-rpg-
∂22-Jan-86 1207 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Hold it right there!
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Jan 86 11:51:18 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 22 Jan 86 14:51:21-EST
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1986 14:51 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12177329947.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>
Cc: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Hold it right there!
In-reply-to: Msg of 22 Jan 1986 14:23-EST from Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI.ARPA>
I agree that the paragraph about where Common Lisp came from needs to be
fixed. While CMU played an important role, so did lots of others, and I
see no particular reason to single out CMU's contribution in this
document. I guess Dick's objection didn't go to the full ISO list. I
was about to propose a similar re-wording to Mathis, and will go ahead
and do this incorporating some of Dick's language.
-- Scott
∂22-Jan-86 1411 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU SPARC proposal
Received: from C.CS.CMU.EDU by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Jan 86 14:11:23 PST
Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 22 Jan 86 17:11:42-EST
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1986 17:11 EST
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12177355505.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-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: SPARC proposal
Bob,
One thing I meant to say in reply to your notes earlier in the week was
that we really need to figure out how the steering and technical
committees relate to the official X3 committee.
The view that I had after the Boston meeting was that we would put
together the steering and technical committees as quickly as possible,
and then propose to ISO/ANSI that they somehow be recognized as
official. In that case, we could start the technical work right away.
As I understand it now, the X3 committee will not be formed until this
summer or early fall, and they will be a self-appointed group -- anyone
can join who pays the $150 dues and who participates. And it is
ultimately up to the X3 committee to elect the technical commitee. We
might be able to get them to rubber stamp our selections, but if the
actual outcome of this is uncertain until September, I see a great
potential for paralysis.
Maybe the right move is just to appoint ourselves as a technical
committee, proceed as if we really believe that we are legitimiate,
and hope that nothing we do gets repudiated in the end. That could work
if we can all carry off the bluff with a straight face.
Regarding your proposal to SPARC, I think that there are some
inaccuracies, especially in the area of history. Let me propose a
revised version (some of the revisions suggested by Dick Gabriel).
The revised paragraphs are flush-left, while the old ones are indented.
1 Identification of Proposed Project
1.1 Title
Common LISP
1.2 Proposer(s)
Robert F. Mathis, 9712 Ceralene Drive, Fairfax, VA 22032,
(703)425-5923, on behalf of the Common LISP Community.
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 endorsed Robert
Mathis as the coordinator and organizer of that effort.
1.3 Date Submitted
February 1, 1986
2 Justification of Proposed Standard
2.1 Needs
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.
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 U. S., and there is great interest
in this language in Europe and Japan. Therefore, we feel that the time
has come to develop an official international standard for this
language.
2.2 Recommended Scope of Standard
2.3 Existing Practice in Area of Proposed Standard
Of the U. S. hardware manufacturers who support any kind of Lisp on
their machines, the overwhelming majority have now announced plans to
the Common Lisp language as described in the Steele book, either as
their only supported Lisp product or alongside some older dialect.
DARPA and other agencies in the DoD are insisting on Common LISP as the
version of LISP to be used on their projects. A Common Lisp Committee
has been formed in Japan to promote the language there, and there is
growing interest in the language in Europe.
2.4 Expected Stability of Proposed Standard with Respect to Current
Quoting from the Introduction" to Common LISP: The Language, "It
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
is intended that Common LISP will change only slowly and with due
deliberation.
LISP may serve as laboratories within which to test language
extensions, but such extensions will be added to Common LISP only
after careful examination and experimentation." (p. 3)
The Common Lisp language is still relatively new, and we would
anticipate that a new revision of the standard would appear
approximately every two years .
3 Description of Proposed Project
3.1 Definitions of Concepts and Special Terms (if any)
3.2 Expected Relationship with Approved X3 Reference Models
3.3 Recommended Program of Work
3.3.1 Base Documents
3.3.2 Time/Milestone Schedule
3.3.3 Potential Participants
Some leaders in the Common LISP Community have already been
identified who are willing to serve: John McCarthy, Stanford
(inventor of Lisp); Guy Steele, Thinking Machines (author of
Common LISP: The Language); Scott Fahlman, CMU; Dick Gabriel,
←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←
Lucid; Dave Moon, Symbolics; Steve Squires, DARPA; Ron Ohlander,
USC-ISI; and Bob Mathis, Private Consultant. Other people we also
expect to be involved include: Danny Bobrow, Xerox; Martin Griss,
H-P; Jonathan Rees, MIT; Jerome Chailloux, INRIA; and Masayuki
Ida, Aoyama Gakuin University. We have not identified anyone
appropriate in Britain, West Germany, or other countries.
<< Maybe this can wait until we have contacted the others. Then it's
just one big list. I would leave out the part about not being able to
find anyone in Britain, etc., or if we must say something, say that we
have not YET found appropriate participants there. No sense making more
enemies. >>
3.4 Resources -- Individuals and Organizations Competent in Subject
3.5 Recommended X3 Development Technical Committee (Existing or New)
3.6 Anticipated Frequency and Duration of Meetings
3.7 Target Date for dpANS to X3 (Milestone 10)
3.8 Estimated Useful Life of Standard
4 Implementation Impacts
4.1 Impact on Existing User Practices and Investments
4.2 Impact on Supplier Products and Support
4.3 Techniques and Costs for Compliance Verification
4.4 Legal Considerations
5 Closely Related Standards Activities
5.1 Existing Standards
5.2 X3 Standards Development Projects
5.3 X3/SPARC Study Groups
5.4 Other Related Domestic Standards Efforts
5.5 ISO Standards Development Projects
5.6 Other Related International Standards Development Projects
5.7 Recommendations for Close Liaison
∂22-Jan-86 1441 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA SPARC's flying
Received: from GODOT.THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Jan 86 14:40:51 PST
Received: from eligius by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Wed, 22 Jan 86 17:40:44 est
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 86 17:41 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: SPARC's flying
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
Message-Id: <860122174143.2.GLS@THINK-ELIGIUS.ARPA>
I agree with the changes that Scott has proposed to Mathis.
Thank you. One minor point: I think that, realistically, the
revision cycle time is more likely to be three years than two.
I want to point out that the wording in the introduction to the
Common Lisp book was very carefully constructed: it says that
*part* of the work on the book was done *in conjunction with*
the Spice project, and that the Spice project happens to be
sponsored by DARPA. What is not stated explicitly is that at
no time during the initial development of Common Lisp was there
any explicit contract from DARPA to develop the definition of
Common Lisp. There was of course a great deal of informal
and indirect encouragement, which was very important; but I would
say it is not correct to say that DARPA "sponsored" Common Lisp.
It's not necessarily that DARPA would not have done so, but merely
that we didn't ask for money directly.
--Guy
∂22-Jan-86 1448 gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA Britain and Italy
Received: from GODOT.THINK.COM by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 22 Jan 86 14:48:13 PST
Received: from eligius by GODOT.THINK.COM via CHAOS; Wed, 22 Jan 86 17:48:29 est
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 86 17:49 EST
From: Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>
Subject: Britain and Italy
To: quinquevirate@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA
Message-Id: <860122174935.3.GLS@THINK-ELIGIUS.ARPA>
I have been informed third-hand that Julian Padget (sp?)
and Guiseppe Attardi might be interested in becoming involved
with an international Common Lisp effort.
∂24-Jan-86 1941 MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA Re: SPARC proposal
Received: from USC-ISIF.ARPA by SU-AI.ARPA with TCP; 24 Jan 86 19:41:32 PST
Date: 24 Jan 1986 18:45-PST
Sender: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
Subject: Re: SPARC proposal
From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA, cl-iso@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[USC-ISIF.ARPA]24-Jan-86 18:45:46.MATHIS>
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12177355505.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Scott,
Thanks for the comments.
-- Bob