New issue: DEFPACKAGE

[Richard Mlynarik <MLY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>]

    Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1988  19:46 EST
    From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>

    I'm a bit uneasy about the syntax that you propose for the options.  It
    would be more compatible with the rest of Common Lisp to use alternating
    keywords and arguments.  Some users may find the odd syntax of your
    DEFPACKAGE to be confusing.  Is there some real advantage to the syntax
    you propose, or is this just a bit of Zetalisp culture peeking through?

DEFSTRUCT (which nobody has ever accused of having non-`odd' syntax) also suffers
 from the same non-&KEY-style.

The saddest things is that this type of syntactical lossage has infected
CLOS DEFxxx, probably because of the precedent in DEFFLAVOR.  I personally
dislike the whole style; unfortunately it seems that few others feel strongly
enough about this issue to raise objections.


[As an aside, I generally prefer not to use macros whose syntax I can't
describe with destructuring lambda-list technology.  Unfortunately,
LET doesn't fit into this class, which I hope says something about
missing &rest-destructuring functionality rather than about my own
inconsistency.]

When I implemented DEFPACKAGE some time ago I preferred and advertised
&KEY-style, but also allowed "(:keyword option)"-style for compatibility.