status of "object" or "standard-object"

[Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM]

    Date: Wed, 14 Oct 87 11:27 EDT
    From: Sonya E. Keene <skeene@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

    Last month we discussed whether CLOS should specify the class "object"
    or "standard-object", and we didn't get anywhere.    

    To me, this seems to be a hole in the spec that we ought to fill up in
    time for the next draft.   It seems like most people believe there will
    be one or more of these classes, but the spec doesn't say anything at 
    all about them.    Unless we do something, our draft will imply that
    there won't be these classes, but we will still be assuming there will
    be.

In fact I think this hole manifests itself in several places.  Specifically,
there are several places in the spec which refer to the "default primary
method" when in fact they should be referring to the "primary method on
object (or standard object)".  The examples of this I can find right now
are:

  update-instance-structure (pg 1-13)
  class-changed (pg 1-15)
  initialize-instance (pg 1-34)

The point in these examples is that these "system supplied" methods are
actually providing default behavior for instances with metaclass
standard-class, so they should be on the class object, thats what its
there for.

Other examples of where a particular implementation might want to have a
method on OBJECT as well as one on T are: 

  print-object (pg 2-63)
  describe (pg 2-39)

So I think we have to include this class (I don't particularly care
about the name), and fix the places I have mentioned to refer to it.
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