About CLOS

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

    Date: Tue, 26 Sep 89 12:37:15+0900
    From: dhlee%csd.kaist.ac.kr@RELAY.CS.NET (DongHyeon Lee)

     I have a great interest in CLOS. I am now implementing CLOS according to
    the CLOS specification which was published to SIGPLAN NOTICES Volume 23.
    That is very helpful to me but I have noticed that 
    there is not enough information on the spec. of generic function & method.

CLOS is incomplete without the supporting Common Lisp, which is 
ANSI Common Lisp.  The specification that will be proposed as a
draft ANSI standard for Common Lisp is still being written and
reviewed.  I believe it's expected to go out for public review
(a standard part of the standards-making process) in the first
half of 1990.  Until then, the specification of CLOS is left
somewhat incomplete.  There isn't really anything published on
ANSI Common Lisp, although there are various internal working
documents of the committee (X3J13) that has been charged with
standardized the language.

    According to the syntax of `defgeneric` or `defmethod`,
    The `function-specifier` is required to be `symbol` or `(setf symbol)`
    but I can't find description of the effect when `(setf symbol)` is selected
    by user.
    
Indeed, this is one of the extensions in ANSI Common Lisp as compared to
Common Lisp: the Language.  This was put in specifically to support
CLOS.

Since you sent this message to SLUG, you're probably a Symbolics user.
Symbolics' implementation of CLOS will be included in Genera 8.0, to be
released in the first calendar quarter of 1990.  You might want to get
the Symbolics document "Getting Ready for CLOS", from June of this year,
which describes how CLOS compares to Flavors and what the Symbolics
implementation will be like.  I believe the answer to your question
about setf-functions is in there.  I don't know how in Korea one
obtains Symbolics documents, but as a Symbolics customer you probably
do.
    
      3. I want to know email/postal address of Richard P. Gabriel.

You could contact him at RPG@Lucid.com.  You may not get a quick answer
as he travels a lot and doesn't always see his mail frequently.