Re: proposal LOAD-TIME-EVAL:REVISED-NEW-SPECIAL-FORM

[David N Gray <Gray@DSG.csc.ti.com>]

>    [By the way, shouldn't the Interlisp 
> precedent bias us towards the name LOAD-TIME-CONSTANT rather than towards 
> LOAD-TIME--EVAL?].

That's LOAD-TIME-VALUE; we don't want the word "constant" in it because
they aren't really constants.

> However, a more serious issue seems to have gotten lost in all the flaming.
> At Lucid, we all seem to favor flushing #,.  Who really wants it? 

I do for one.  We are using an equivalent of LOAD-TIME-VALUE in our
implementation of CLOS, and I see no reason to not make that feature
available to users. 

> There is a serious flaw in the design of #, and for this reason alone
> it should be flushed

The problem that you describe seems to be an argument against proposal
LOAD-TIME-EVAL:QUOTED-MAGIC-TOKEN and in favor of proposal
LOAD-TIME-EVAL:REVISED-NEW-SPECIAL-FORM, since I believe that the latter
proposal corrects your problem.

>    The 
> burden of _proof_ to show that any reasonable program is seriously 
> hampered without it is on those who invoke the argument. 

I thought that Pitman already did a good job of showing why #, is needed.

  -- David Gray