Out-of-core maclisp system stuff

[JONL at MIT-MC (Jon L White)]

    Date: 5 February 1980 22:38-EST
    From: Alan Bawden <ALAN at MIT-MC>
    I consider it a bug that the DEFMAX package must be loaded in order
    ...  Why should a utility function like FORMAT require such runtime
    support? ... If these functions are really all that necessary then perhaps
    we should make them part of the default MacLisp world instead of
    pussyfooting around with this autoloading gubbish.  
Aside from the fact that DEFMAX is about .3K words and FORMAT is about 3K,
isn't this part of your complaint satisfactorily answered by the second
part of it?
    ... Just looking at the source of DEFMAX I don't see any reason that 
    these functions should
    be polluting my lisp environment since I no longer even use the
    standard DEFMACRO.
By the bye, did you ever use the "standard" DEFMACRO?  Apart from
coalescing the two main streams of "memoizing/displaceing" prevalent
around the labs here, it does it destructuring by defaulting to LET,
thereby modularizing the destructuring component.  I see also that
the LISPM  system-supplied version of DISPLACE is inadequate for doing
the "updating" kind of macroexpansion suggested by Ken Kahn - namely
that if you redefine a macro (admittedly by use of DEFMACRO rather
than MACRO), all previous expansions are automatically invalidated.