Re: #+<feature>

[JONL@MIT-MC]

CC: JPG at MIT-MC, RZ at MIT-MC
Well, the NIL syntax had planned to use  #+  and  #-  as
positive and negative infinities, but this is certainly flexible;
maybe  #I+  and  #I-  would do.  But there is a more important
screw -  #Q  already means "number-string in base octal";  there
seemed to be good reason to choose "Q" as this character, by 
historical precedent, just as   #X  means "number-string in base hex".
I suppose that #Q could be changed in NIL, but this does seem to show
the importance of being cooperative on these features that are likely
to be in all shared files.  Would it be possible to get this corrected
before anymore clashes occur?  One way out would be to adopt CWH's
proposal so that existing shared software would use  #+LISPM  instead
of #Q;  and parochial software could continue to use whatever private
conventions it wanted.
   Apologies for the duplication that will probably occur in this
mailing, but this seems an important enough matter to be sure that
everyone gets it.   The current NIL proposal for # admits the following
character as special when immediately after it (excluding + and - for now):
   "  (  *  ,  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  :  =  ?  B  L  Q  T  X  ^