MCL Direction?

[Dave Lucky <76557.704@CompuServe.COM>]

I'm a Macintosh developer who has used different development environments 
(MPW/C++/Pascal/MacApp, Think C/Pascal, Objectworks\Smalltalk, and HyperCard).  
I'm currently taking a look at whether I can use either MCL or MacScheme to 
develop and deliver my applications.  Right now, I'm still pretty new to MCL 
(and Lisp in general) but I'm already pretty excited about it because I like to 
develop applications using small, incremental steps and I like to experiment 
with my applications' user interfaces.  There are, however, some questions that 
I'd like someone at Apple (or anyone else that knows the answers) to address 
before I can make a commitment to using MCL on a project:

1) When am I going to be able to deliver an MCL application that only contains 
the code for that application?

2) When will garbage collection not cause so much of a hiccup?

3) Is there any rule of thumb that I can use to estimate the performance 
differences between an MCL application and a C++/MacApp application?  In other 
words, is there a performance penalty for using MCL over C++/MacApp and what is 
a reasonable guess (10%, 20%, 50%)?

4) When will I see a class library of the scope of MacApp?  Will I have the 
source to this library?

5) When will I see a class browser tool that shows me everything I need to know 
about all of the classes in MCL?

6) When will the IFT be upgraded to handle all of the interface classes?  I'd 
like to be able to layer views and have more control over their initial settings
like I get with ViewEdit.  I'd also like to be able to define event behaviors 
for a view within the IFT tool (e.g, adjusting cursors, mouse down/up events, 
double/triple clicks, etc.) as well as defining new classes of views.

7) When will the equivalent of the MacApp tutorial and cookbook be created.  
These should handle all of the things that I would need to do to create a 
product-quality application (e.g., undo, printing, exception handling including 
low-memory conditions, etc.).  By the way, I think the tutorials on the IFT and 
CLOS are pretty good but would be a prerequisite to what I've described.

8) Will there be a coding-style document explaining guildlines for packaging and
organizing code into files for a project (including code for multi-methods) as 
well as guidelines for writing lisp code, writing higher performance code, 
writing code for stand-alone applications, and how to organize and write code 
for portability.

9) What's a good strategy for localization of applications?  What are the 
technical aspects of modifying my product produced with MCL for international 
markets?  By the way, I don't know that I have seen Apple address this issue for
applications produced by MacApp.

10) What is Apple's commitment to MCL?  The answers to the questions above will 
allow me to judge the commitment level at least for the near term.  How does 
Apple see MCL fitting into its PowerPC, Pink, and Enterprise plans?  Does it 
plan to provide MCL and all of the necessary libraries to these platforms when 
these things appear?

Thanks much,
Dave Lucky