Gratuitous incompatibilities

[Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>]

    Date: 18 February 1981 00:27-EST
    From: Daniel L. Weinreb <dlw at MIT-AI>
    Subject: Gratuitous incompatibilities
    To: RWK at MIT-MC
    cc: BUG-LISP at MIT-AI, BUG-LISPM at MIT-AI
    
    The reason that y-or-n-p took either order is because we were in the
    process of converting to the new order of arguments.  That was only a
    temporary state; we never design things that way for real.  We knew that
    we were going to remove the STREAM STRING ordering long before we
    actually removed it.  Did you ask anyone, before you assumed it would
    stay that way?

I knew it was temporary, actually, I just got the direction of the
transition wrong.  I'm of the opinion you shouldn't have made the
change, you should have made the extention to args like FORMAT instead.
I'm not upset or anything, just a friendly jab after all the complaints
about MacLisp being gratutitously incompatible.

I'm not at all enthused about reducing MacLisp's Y-OR-N-P's
functionality since I use it heavily (and know others do as well).  I'm
afraid to ask what your feelings would be to changing the LISPM's
version to be compatible with MacLisp.  At least there is a compatible
subset that can be documented.  Opinions?