Re: ISO Lisp (was: Re[4]: format ~/function/)

[Bruno Haible <haible@ilog.fr>]

[Message forwarded from Simon Brooke <simon@caleddon.jasmine.org.uk>.]

On Aug 19,  4:14pm, Bruno Haible scrievit:
>> Concairnin: Re: ISO Lisp (was: Re[4]: format ~/function/)
> Sam Steingold <sshteingold@cctrading.com> wrote:
>
> >      Of course, as a European, you might be
> >      disgusted even more by the US-centrism of calling an ANSI CL *the*
> >      standard, but, as a reasonable person, you will probably admit that an
> >      ISO CL, if it ever appears, will be based on the ANSI CL. :-)
>
> ANSI CL is the standard for Common Lisp. That's no "US-centrism" since
> the standard was mostly made by US organizations, researchers and companies.
>-- End of excerpt from Bruno Haible

We had this argument a long time ago, and (as far as I'm concerned) the
forces of reason lost. EuLISP would not have been my perfect LISP either,
but it was (in my opinion) better than Common LISP. However, we (the
Europeans in the standardisation process) didn't win partly because we
were fewer, less well funded and less homogenous, but mostly because the
Americans were a long way ahead of us and we were mostly just reacting.

In any case, ANSI CL *was* accepted, not just by ANSI but more or less
implicitly by the rest of us (I was on the BSI committee) not because
anyone necessarily thought it was a good standard but because it was *a*
standard. And, with the state of the world and the state of LISP, it
seemed quite likely that if we didn't unite around a standard the whole
LISP project would become so marginal as to be of no commercial
importance at all. And I'm afraid that's still true.

Cheers

Simon



-- 
simon@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) 

		;; when in the shit, the wise man plants courgettes