Documenting our decisions

[Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>]

    Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1986  01:59 EST
    From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>

    ...
    Once the new spec document is ready, according to us, we could find a
    way to do a mass printing of it -- we don't need to wait till ANSI and
    ISO do their thing.

Well, there is $5000 sitting in an escrow account at Digital Press that
can be tapped for such a purpose if we only form a legal entity to
receive it.

    If the Digital Press book were not the basis for the new standard
    document, any second edition of that would be a private matter between
    you and Digital Press.  My thought was that an updated version of the
    Digital Press book could appear just after the proposed standard is
    finished.  It would explictly point to the standard document as
    definitive, but would try to describe the contents of that document in a
    form more useful to the average Common Lisp user.  The ANSI/ISO document
    would be for implementors, language lawyers, and nit pickers.

If you really think that the ANSI document really would be so incredibly
turgid and opaque that people would rather read the silver book, then
perhaps a second edition would make sense.  :-)  However, I would rather
see a readable ANSI document plus a good tutorial.

    -- Scott

--Guy