Re: Issue: EXTENSIONS-POSITION (version 1)

[Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Tue, 31 Jan 89 13:45:40 MST
    From: sandra%defun@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)

    ... It does list a set that are explicitly reserved for users, though. ...

In the world of third- (or Nth-) party products, I have to say that I
find this concept pretty bizarre. If I market two Common Lisps, one
layered atop the other, or if I market a Lisp and a Lisp+Tools (eg,
embedded expert system) environment, is the layered product a "user"? If
I think I'm a user for months until I realize I've got something
valuable and then decide to sell it, must I go through and eliminate my
use of readmacros because suddenly I'm not the end user?

I think we should eliminate the seemingly arbitrary distinction between
Nth level and N-1th level users. CL either defines something or it does
not. What happens after that is out of its jurisdiction. We don't define
the myriad of other things that might be added later; of what possible
value is it for us to reserve a few obscure characters in an obscure
namespace?

As an aside, if we did readtables right (allowed local binding of them)
we could forbid extension and say that extensions should be provided in
another readtable.