Unification of series with generators/gatherers

[cperdue@Sun.COM (Cris Perdue)]

Dick Waters and I have talked a bit on the phone about this.

As you recall, Dick has made 2 different suggestions about
unifying gathering with series.  The first proposal involved
a "gathering" form that returns a series.  The second involves
gatherer objects, more as in generators/gatherers proposals.

He feels that the "gathering" form he proposed in the earlier note
should be retracted.  I found both proposals to be logical,
and without that "gathering" form in the proposal I certainly support the style
with gatherer objects.

I hope that the other people who care will be able to support this
also, especially since it represents a full unification of the
concepts of series and of generators/gatherers.  We claim that
this is a "full unification" because it represents the union of
the functionality with only minor addition to the number of names
required by the series proposal alone.

Dick has done a lot of implementation work, and I hope he will
send us a note about that.

If there are still supporters of generators and gatherers out there,
and I think there are, I'm soliciting your support for the unified
proposal now.
				-Cris