Documents

[Dick Gabriel <RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>]

The documents are just about ready to go onto [cls,lsp].  They will be
mailed out friday afternoon, I believe. I will be out of town until next
Wednesday. Until I return, the protection on [cls,lsp] will prevent any
accidental overwriting of the files.  This way people who wish to FTP them
for early perusal will know they are getting the very thing that is being
mailed.

Once they have been digested by people we will decide what to do.
I think it's reasonable to let the documents sit for a while for
people to gather their thoughts about what's left.

First, Danny and Gregor will be sending out a preliminary version of a
draft for chapter 3. It will have a separate document number so that
people will be able to refer to the reasonably well-thought-out chapter
1-2 draft without including the hot-out-of-the-oven chapter 3.  We should
think about what to do with chapter 3.

Second, MAKE-INSTANCE was left unspecified, and the things it supercedes
(MAKE-METHOD etc) were left in chapters 1 and 2.

Third, Danny mentioned some discomfort with respect to inheritance of slot
descriptions as described in chapter 1. Again, I tried to make it precise
and unambiguous so that we can all see what it is we are buying into.

Fourth, I think we should seriously think about the overall complexity of
the specification and what it specifies. I think the complexity is a little
high for something on which to standardize. The descriptions of the aspects
of it are very complex in places, mostly because there is no vocabulary
or a priori mental model of the concepts.

LGD will be around while I'm away, but she (and I) are pretty burned out
after a solid week of 8 - 10 hours a day on this document (!). 

Enjoy.
				-rpg-