4.2

[Richard P. Gabriel <rpg@lucid.com>]

     (although I think it goes without saying since the standard leaves the
     format of such files unspecified)


The first thing to realize is that nothing goes without saying. We
cannot begin to imagine the sort of backgrounds people will have when
they read this.

What I'm saying in general is simple. I want to specify that if a user
does X, his code is guaranteed to to work according to Common Lisp
semantics. If the user does something besides X, it still might work.
I don't want a reader of the spec to wonder how to get a simple
program to work. Nothing I'm suggesting is a restriction on what the
user can do. The issue that passed and that disallowed changes to the
LISP package symbols makes specification of X easier.

			-rpg-