Clarificaiton Needed

[Jon Sticklen <STICKLEN@RUTGERS.ARPA>]

Because of several recent messages in this forum, I feel that some
clarrification is needed. Alan Synder's message and Scott Fahlman's
that preceded it both seem to indicate that there is a large demand
for FLAVORS in the world, hence it may be unavoidable that the CL 
standard simply mirror what currently is FLAVORS. [Fahlman's
note argues against it, but Synder's note is what the
following is really aimed at.]

As the message from Tom Bylander tried to say, it is important that
the use of FLAVORS be factored into at least 
	a) FLAVORS used for internal system work in the ZETA LISP
	   environment and
	b) FLAVORS used for exploratory AI system building.

If it is seriously considered that this body accept FLAVORS as THE
CL object oriented programming standard, then I think it very important
that there be some documentation to support the notion that demand for
FLAVORS is overwhelming for use (b) above. Use (a) seems to me to be
important only for those in the ZETA LISP environment. [Of course, if
it is being suggested that the CL object oriented programming standard
should be made to support the ZETA LISP world, that would be another 
matter. But if that is the reason, then it should be made clear.]

The reason I raise this issue is that I'm not sure personally that there
in fact is overwhelming demand for FLAVORS for use (b). At the Austin AAAI,
for example, I visited the KNOBS (sp?) demo at the SYMBOLICS booth. There
I found that KNOBS was build in a local version of FRL, not FLAVORS as I
expected. Further, on visiting a demo of a chemical plant designing system
(whose name I don't remember) at the LMI booth, again I found that the system
was not build in FLAVORS (by that time I expected it). There were other 
similar examples.

My question then (based on just what I saw at AAAI): could it be that the
demand for FLAVORS is based on use (a) almost totally, and that use (b)
is in fact rather small? If the answer to that question is "Yes", then
the even deeper question (the one I asked myself) is "Why is that true?".

	---jon---
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