Issue: [Not Really] LET-TOP-LEVEL (version 1)

[jap%maths.bath.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK]

In fact, I spent some time at YKT last summer working *for* Mark on this.
I did give a short, inconclusive, report about this at Fort Collins and you
may have seen a very drafty note about it that I sent to the eulisp list -
I did hear that it did get a wider physical distribution after the electronic
one (which was a source of some embarassment to me).

I have just got down to doing some further work on macros (whilst I
was away during the last week) and had reached precisely the points
that people are now discussing on CL-cleanup, which is all useful
input for me.  I doubt I will have anything finished for next week (it
is presently unclear whether I will be at X3J13 either, because of
airline reservation problems).  I also doubt that the conclusions will
be popular, since the one obvious remark is that Lisp macros are a
terrible mess, are further compounded in Common Lisp and that "if I
were you, I wouldn't start from here"!  It is precisely because of the
environment issue and the way that it has been attempted to finesse
multiple environments in CL that we have been treated to examples of
such subtlety on this mailing list of late.

Of course, it is easy to criticise rather than making a proposal and
laying oneself open to criticism...there might be something in a few
weeks, I hope.

--Julian.