Foreigners

[MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA]

I was a little worried when Scott used this subject heading; I
thought he might be taking about other language type people.

I thought we had all converged on Ida.  The only question seemed
to be how to bring him in -- direct personal invitation or
slection by the Japanese committee.  I'll go with whichever Scott
decides.  We might offer him at least a provisional place until
the Japanese selection is done.

I hope something positive comes of my trip next week.  I will be
talking primarily about procedural and organizational issues.
The point that I have noticed in the discussions on this subset
or minimal set or core language is approximately --

standards for subset languages motivated by machine capacities
are not very useful (eg, Minimal BASIC and the PL/I subset);
there is a strong desire in the Lisp community for minimal
logical basis for the language (who else uses "pure" as a
descriptor?), but practicality is the strongest motivator in the
standardization effort (people are using Common Lisp and what we
need now is a common, standardized definition of that).  Everyone
seems interested in discussing a minimal core basis for Lisp, but
that should not delay the currently needed standard for what is
generally understand as Common Lisp.

-- Bob