Franz/Common lisp

[Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C>]

Harold,

A couple of things make it seem unlikely that anyone would have such a
package right now.  First, we don't even have a final Common Lisp manual
yet -- Guy's next draft is due very soon, but there will be some tuning
and hassling after that.  Second, there are things in Common Lisp that
would be very tough to fake on Franz: lexical binding, generic
sequences, some of the hairy number types, character objects, etc.
Common Lisp is pretty close to being a superset of Franz, so I would
expect to see Franz compatibility packages in Common Lisp, but not vice
versa.  Third, if anyone were writing such a package, they would be
crazy not to have arranged for access to our code that implements all of
the hairy functions, and nobody has done this to my knowledge.

My standard advice is for people to continue to code in Franz with the
knowledge that they can easily convert their code to Common Lisp
whenever the DEC Common Lisp is available to them.  This should be a
one-time conversion, since moving the other way after "going native" in
Common Lisp would be very tough.

If someone does pop up with a compatibility package -- even a partial
one -- I would be interested in hearing about it.

-- Scott