Re: Issue: PACKAGE-CLUTTER

[masinter.pa@Xerox.COM]

Sometimes when you write a treaty, you just don't talk about the things that you
think you might not agree about. However, a language specification has to be a
bit more precise, especially in those areas where there really is a question.

I think that either the standard should be completely silent about USER -- e.g.,
say "the initial package should be something other than LISP and the
implementation should document what it is...", or else be explicit about it.
What's the point of requiring this otherwise useless package? Again, this is a
requirement for implementation rather than programs. 

If we want to point out to implementors in the notes the risk of internal uses
of external symbols, I think that's OK as an 'implementation note', but I don't
think its a good reason for forbidding the use of internal symbols in LISP. And
that DO-SYMBOLS  might differ from implementation to implementation is not
significantly different than the fact that DO-ALL-SYMBOLS might do so also.

This reminds me of my desire to have a general non-exclusive registry of
package, feature and module names. I'm thinking about how to best set it up..,
but that's a separate topic.