Who goes first?

[RWK at MIT-MC (Robert W. Kerns)]

I don't think the two situations (# and CR) are quite analogous.  There's
a hell of a lot more to be broken by # than by autoterpri.  There does have
to be a period of transition, yes.  The question becomes:  Who do you screw?
I'd say there's fewer people with programs that have to watch out for old
autoterpri lossages than there are people who want to use the new CR syntax
in their files.  So on whom should the burden of the transion fall?  It's my
view that it is more of a loss to make everyone temporarily put some lossage
like (EVAL-WHEN (EVAL COMPILE)
	(SSTATUS SYNTAX /
(STATUS SYNTAX / )))
in all their files.  And their LISP inits, and any LISP environment they
get into that they want to type at, etc. etc. etc.  Waiting to make the
change will only make it harder for people to tranport code to the Lisp
Machines and Multics (don't forget Multics Macsyma, Jeff!).