[no subject]

[DICK@MIT-ML]

	I am certainly in favor of the original change that introduced
*CATCH & *THROW instead of CATCH & THROW.  I am also in favor of
getting rid of the old meaning of CATCH & THROW permanently.  There is
no reason for the confusion of having both.  I suggest picking an exact
date for the total demise of CATCH & THROW, and putting this date in 
the compiler error message in order to encourage people to change.

	There is a second question however, of then going back to the original
names CATCH & THROW, with the new meaning.  I STRONGLY object to this for three
reasons:

 1. Why bother?  Who cares what the names are?  I don't want to go edit all my
files again for such a trivial thing as that.

 2. there is an advantage to just keeping the new names.  you get to keep 
giving people reasonable error messages for ever.  Particularly since we have
a million old lisp manuals around that will be giving wrong information
for ever, it should save a lot of grief for the new people that are always
arriving.

 3. The lisp machine still uses the names *CATCH & *THROW as far as I
know.  Is it going to change?  If not, we would be introducing another
incompatability.  I do not think we should make the change unless the
lispm does too.  I do not think we should introduce unnecessary
incompatabilities.

	In summary, I do not think we should make the second step of
the change because it definitely has a cost, and I do not think it is
worth anything significant.

			Richard Waters