ISO News

[gls@Think.COM (Guy Steele)]

   Date: 28 Sep 89  1233 PDT
   From: Dick Gabriel <RPG@sail.stanford.edu>
   ...
   The question I have is whether to press hard with the CL-CLOS proposal.
   The Japanese commented privately that CLOS would probably be adopted by
   Japanese implementors, but that they were insistent that an ISO standard
   should enable existing programs to run in preference to providing a
   language to write new ones.  They suggested that `later' we could consider
   adding CLOS, if it was a commercial success.

Except for various incompatibilities of the usual sort, such as name
conflicts, I see no reason why the presence of CLOS in an implementation
should prevent existing programs from running.  Were the Japanese really
talking about existing *programs* continuing to run, or about existing
*implementations* continuing to be standard-conforming after making all
non-CLOS changes but without having to implement CLOS?

   An important step forward was that they dropped the idea that CL = CLtL and
   accepted that CL = X3J13 CL.

Hooray!

   I believe that if we produce CL-CLOS, the following countries will vote for it:

	   US, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan.

   France will vote against it.

Is there any possible thing X3J13 could produce that France would vote for?
(This question is serious, not merely rhetorical.)

--Q