Issue SAFE-CODE, version 1

[Dick Gabriel <RPG@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>]

The point of these definitions is to lay out terminology that
enables programmers to know with certainty on what ground they stand
with respect to the specification. ``Safe code'' is a technical term
that means that the code was ``processed'' under this declaration.

This means intuitively that it is as safe (English word) as it can get.
But it also means that it is ``safe code'' in the CL jargon, and eveything
we say about safe code there is also true of it. 

The meaning of safe code (English phrase), as in ``as safe as it can
get,'' is spelled out in the specification as the sequence of statements
we make about the attributes of safe code. It might be that some or all of
those attributes apply to code processed under lower safety optimization
levels, but the programmer can be sure only when the highest safety level
is used.

I think Moon's problem is that the usual practice is to borrow English
words for these technical terms, and that works fine until the
negation of the term is needed. We want some word to mean ``not `safe' ''.
``Unsafe'' is an available English word that does not mean the
complement of ``safe'', it means the reverse of safe. Thus, the parallel
senses of the technical pair ``safe/unsafe'' are not the same as the
vernacular pair safe/unsafe.

Also, the definitions of the terms point out that what is defined as
``unsafe code'' might actually be exactly as safe (English) as ``safe code.''

			-rpg-