History Section (1.1)

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

    Date: Sun, 16 Apr 89 22:29:39 PDT
    From: Richard P. Gabriel <rpg@lucid.com>

    Here is my current rewrite of the history section (1.1).

This is mostly good.  It's so terse that it reads rather choppily, but
since that's intentional, I won't complain.

I have a few comments (all nit picking I think):

    One response to the address space problem was the Lisp machine, a
    special-purpose computer designed to run Lisp programs.  The other
    response was to use computers with address spaces larger than 18~bits,
    such as the Digital Equipment Corporation Vax and the S-1~Mark~IIA.

I think the word "general-purpose" is missing from the third line.  The
Lisp machine is also a computer with address space larger than 18 bits.
 
"Lisp Machine" is usually spelled with both words capitalized.
"VAX" is usually spelled in all caps.

I'm obliged to point out that the word "ZetaLisp" is a registered
trademark of Symbolics, Inc., so this shouldn't say that other
organizations (such as LMI and MIT) were also developing something
called "ZetaLisp".  I don't remember what it was called at MIT, 
perhaps just "Lisp Machine Lisp."
 
    During the mid-1970's, ZetaLisp began to expand towards a much fuller

ZetaLisp didn't exist until 1980 or 1981, and Lisp Machine Lisp began
to expand in 1976 or 1977, so I would say the late 1970's rather than
the mid 1970's.

    In the mid-1970's object-oriented programming concepts started to make
    a strong impact on Lisp' At MIT, Flavors, an object-oriented
    programming system with multiple inheritance patterned after
    Smalltalk was developed and integrated into Lisp machines.  At Xerox,

Maybe this is late 1970's too, I'm not sure.  More to the point, I'd
change the word order since the multiple inheritance as the part that
was -not- patterned after Smalltalk:

    At MIT, Flavors, an object-oriented programming system patterned
    after Smalltalk but with multiple inheritance, was developed and
    integrated into Lisp Machines.

I agree with this paragraph but there is something wrong with the way
the 3rd sentence flows into the 4th sentence.  I haven't been able to
figure out quite how to rework it, but the outline is: 
  CLtL had this goal
  The new language has a different goal
  These are the differences
Maybe someone else can take a stab at it.

    {\it Common Lisp the Language\/} is a description of that design.  Its
    semantics were intentionally underspecified in places where it was
    felt that a tight specification would overly constrain @clisp\
    research and use.  However, industrial use of @clisp\ mandates
    stricter standardization for portability.  Left out of the original
    @clisp\ were an object-oriented programming system, a condition
    system, iteration facilities, and a way to handle large character
    sets.  Therefore, a new language specification, this document, was
    developed by the X3J13 committee.