Lisp conference

[Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>]

    Date: 22 Apr 1986 05:42-PST
    From: MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA

		 Their August meeting will be in Boston at the same
    time as the Lisp Conference.  We should probably plan some
    information on Common Lisp standardization activities for that
    conference.  What's appropriate?

In my opinion, the most important thing would be an announcement to the
attendees of the current state of things.  We should announce the
existence and member of the technical and steering committees, and give
a brief agenda for each of them.  We should explain what's going on with
ANSI and ISO, and what's going on regarding the formal definition of the
standard.  We should also clear the air by announcing the official state
of standardization of extensions, such as the error/condition system,
object-oriented programming, and window systems.  (By "we" I'm not
necessarily including myself, since I'm not personally on the
committees, but that's not important.)  Presumably the conference
chairman should figure out how to best fit this into the format of the
conference.

By the way, you might be interested to know that the program committee
for the conference accepted a paper entitled "Desiderata for the
standardization of Lisp", by 13 European authors, headed by Julian
Padgett of Bath and including Chailloux.  It attempts to present the
situation up to now, present some conclusions about how to proceed, and
their present progress to date, of which there is little, as they
readily admit.  One of their conclusions is that there should be several
levels of standard, each a proper subset of the one above.  It's clear
that they are trying to live with Common Lisp rather than fight it; the
tone is pretty reasonable and I don't see any problems coming from this.