scope of call-next-method

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 12 Nov 87 10:55 PST
    From: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM

    I would still rather have call-next-method only be valid in the body of
    the method and let users who want to do defaulting using it do the
    defaulting by hand in the obvious way.  I believe that the model that
    defmethod wrap an flet around their body is a great deal simpler than
    the model required to explain the behavior you propose.  

I believe precisely the opposite, particularly since the way this is
explained to users surely does not involve writing out lambda
expressions and flets.  That's only a way to explain it to implementors.
I think you're concentrating too much on the implementation and not
enough on the semantics.  I propose that we leave call-next-method the
way it is and not change it.

I believe it's simpler to say that call-next-method works anywhere in a
method than to say it only works some places in a method, thus having to
say that if you use it in argument defaulting, you have to do the
argument defaulting a different way than you would ordinarily do it.

By the way, I tried the scoping you propose in Flavors, for the same
reason I think: I was concentrating too much on the implementation and
not enough on the semantics.  My users forced me to change it to the
scoping I propose.  These were outside users, not Symbolics people.