Error Proposal #5 is available

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

My error proposal has been bouncing back and forth between myself, Dave
Moon, and Richard Mlynarik for the last couple of months. I think it has
changed somewhat from what was proposed in December, for the better we
think. The three of us are not in complete agreement, but are probably
as close as we're going to get. I'd now like it if other people got
copies of the proposal and looked it over. Keep in mind as you do that
compromises are going to be necessary if we're going to ever get
anything put into place.

Since the proposal is long, I've put it temporarily in the following
file on MIT-MC:

  COMMON; CL-ERR PROP5

Dick Gabriel has promised to put a copy in a more permanent home on
SU-AI, and will follow this message with the name of that file when he
has moved that copy. If anyone is unable to FTP files from MIT-MC or
SU-AI, they should send mail to me (KMP@Symbolics) or Gabriel
(RPG@SU-AI) and we'll try to push a copy through the mail.

There were several intermediate proposals that you shouldn't expect to
have seen, which is why this is called proposal #5.

For now I think it's ok to proceed with a relatively open discussion on
the proposal to see what issues people feel are important to discuss.
However, I anticipate that the discussion to follow may need some
direction to keep it from getting out of hand, so if I end up having to
step in and take things a few issues at a time, please bear with me.

A sample, portable, public domain implementation of the majority of the
functions needed will follow under separate cover in a week or two.
Jonathan Rees has volunteered to try to put it together.

Thanks to all for their patience. I know this took a bit longer to
distribute than I'd said it would. I think the changes made in the
interim have been worth the extra time; I hope you'll agree.