Comments on most recent draft: Chap 1 and 2

[Jon L White <edsel!jonl@labrea.Stanford.EDU>]

    Date: Thu, 4 Feb 88 14:46:35 PST
    From: Jon L White <edsel!jonl@labrea.Stanford.EDU>
    ....
    re: But, haven't we already extended symbol-function to take lists of the 
	form (setf fn) as an argument.  If not, how do we get hold of setf 
	generic-functions?
    I don't recall how the recent discussions on this mailing list suggested
    to do it.

  This was in a cleanup proposal which the Cleanup committee already approved,
  submitted to X3J13 in November, and was approved by X3J13 at that time.  I
  wasn't there, so I don't know for sure what happened, but I don't think
  there was any voting.  Perhaps there was some kind of verbal approval.
  Anyway my point is that this is as settled an issue as any issue can be
  and there's a place where the answer is written down.  I don't have a copy
  of it myself or I'd send it to you.

You're jumping the gun here.  The issue of (setf fn) as a function name
came up as a need from CLOS, but was never presented for approval.  Larry 
assigned a sub-sub-committee to try to write up some proposal that would 
encompass "function specs".

We (this sub-sub-...) have met by conference phone, and discussed what 
to do; initially Bob Kerns is working on a "definition specs" proposal 
that will clean up and extend the LispMachine's functions specs somewhat. 
But we all feel that this is new development -- not just a simple 
"clarification", or "cleanup" or minor extension to Common Lisp, and 
more serious thought needs to be given to the question.  Most likely 
there will much discussion about it in Palo Alto next month.

The only thing that's been settled so far is that we all agree on the
need to do something.  The actual scope of what is done, the names
of the constructs, and as Danny asks "how do we get hold of setf 
generic-functions?" are hardly a settled issues right now.  At any rate, 
I think he (Danny) was just asking how "we", the CLOS development, 
proposed to get access to these things.


-- JonL --