Re: issue IN-PACKAGE-FUNCTIONALITY

[sandra%defun@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)]

I'm well aware that removing the magical behavior of the package
functions is an incompatible change to the language and would have a
considerable impact on users.  I think the impact would be less than
that of the current proposal, though.  (It not only removes the
magical behavior of all of the other package functions, it changes
IN-PACKAGE in a way that does not allow implementations to maintain
the status quo as a compatible extension -- things that are currently
legal and common practice would be required to cause an error to be
signalled.)

My intention was not to prohibit implementations from treating the
package functions magically as an extension.  I expect that most would
wish to do so.  In fact, I was even considering continuing to require
them to do so, provided that the standard makes it clear that the use
of IN-PACKAGE and friends for declaring a package is considered
obsolete, that the magic behavior is provided only for compatibility
reasons and may be removed in future versions of the standard, and
that the "right" way to get the desired behavior is described.  An
alternate approach might be define the magical behavior as a standard
feature.

It would be really nice if we could decide on a standard policy for
handling obsolete "features" of the language, because this issue would
certainly fall into that category. 

-Sandra
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