Issue: DEFINE-OPTIMIZER

[Jim McDonald <jlm@lucid.com>]

    One of the nice things about Pitman's proposal is that it is general
    enough so that you could use it to implement the kind of rule-based
    approach you describe.  I tend to agree with Pitman that this is an
    advanced feature, and that people who use it will be willing and able
    to do that kind of thing.

Does this mean it is fair to assume that if users want to use the
feature across several ports, they will be willing to modify the
(presumably incompatible) optimization routines supplied by different
vendors, and that vendors will be encouraged to release the source
code for their optimizers?   (Otherwise optimizers are likely to be
quiet pessimizers, bypassing internal tricks.)

I see nothing inherently wrong with that, but would like it to be clear
that the level of portability may be very low, with parallel
maintenance required for every vendor you port to, and that effective
use will require a moderate amount of documention from the vendors.

  jlm