Re: Language design online

[SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)]

It seems that there is noone really responsible for the collection and
distribution of "accepted" changes (such as the recent /\ change) from
this forum.  I think that this is a major problem both for the integrity
of the language in general and especially for LISP users not connected
to ARPA -- what happens to them when they get a package from MIT with
shlases inteads of slashes?!  Shouldn't there be a LISP standards group
(I hesitate to use the term "committee") with some reasonably sane filing
system in order to hash thru all the (perfectly reasonable) flaming that
goes on here?  Additionally, there are more lisp users off ARPA than on
it.  Souldn't they have some input?  Perhaps this could be facilitated
somewhat by the organization of a SIGLISP (since SIGPLAN has become 
SIGADA and/or SIGXconsideredY recently).

I think that online flaming is certainly of use but that someone someplace
should be appointed to actually centralize and standardize the language.
I flamed at length a while back about how APL has benefited from such a
centralized language definition and careful talk [a lot of APL discussion
is also flaming but someone, someplace looks it all over -- used to be
IBM, not it's STSC I suppose].  I won't flame about that again but I feel
that this is an important issue that is very basic to the success of LISP
in the real world.  

There have been articles recently proclaiming LISP as the language of the
future (about which I will withhold judgement).  Now that the LMs are
commecially available this issue is much more important... the business
world would never sit still for the kind of changing around that goes on
here -- note the recent reaction to the Cobol80 standard suggestion.  That's
going to go down!

I would like to see a LISP SIG (not just all of us) begun and some type of
standards organization.

-- Jeff