Re: Error Proposal #5: difficulties and suggestions

[Jeff Dalton <jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>]

   Date: Wed, 7 May 86 14:16 EDT
   From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@arpa.scrc-stony-brook>

   Jonathan Rees had volunteered do the implementation. I'd been psyched about
   that because I was hoping to get some feedback from someone who hadn't used
   the LispM about how intelligible the English of the proposal was based on
   their having tried to implement it without seeing any code from me.

   Anyone who's in a hurry is of course free to pick up the spec and do a
   portable implementation sooner if their schedule is more open than mine.
                    
For what it's worth, I implemented the #4 version of the proposal a while ago,
and found the specification fairly, but not entirely, clear.  Most of my
questions were answered by proposal #5, but I haven't yet had time to write
another implementation.  (Besides, I thought the portable one would appear any
day.)  I do think it's an excellent way to test the proposal, though, and I
may find time to try again.

The main reason for doing an implementation was that I'd never used a LispM
and couldn't really understand how it was all supposed to fit together.  It
was only after I'd written the code that I could see more or less how it was
supposed to work.
   
My guess is that other people may have had similar problems and were waiting
for something to play with before trying to discuss the proposal.

-- Jeff