Re: CSI Lisp price

[Andy Freeman <ANDY@SU-SUSHI>]

[This is a second posting because bccvax!t-discussion@yale was
returned to me.]

I like the idea of trying T from yale for little money then paying
more to get support and documentation, but Jim Meehan has raised some
issues that imply that this may not be possible.  CSI Lisp may really
be a 2nd order CommonLisp or Lisp/VM.  Mixing in some T syntax doesn't
make it T.

Right now, it looks like CSI Lisp's claim to being T is irresponsible.
I don't know whether this is true or not, but we definitely need more
information.  As to its claim to being SCHEME, the introduction to
Steele's SCHEME thesis says:

    "[We defined] named SCHEME with the properties of lexical scoping
     and tail-recursion....  The two properties of lexical scoping
     and tail-recursion are not independent.  ..."

Only later are first class functions mentioned, and then as a feature.

The questions "what is T" and "what is SCHEME" are subtle; the above
is not conclusive.  I repeat, we need more information.

I don't have a copy of the CommonLisp manual, but I was under the
impression that CommonLisp is tail-recursive.  That's somewhat beside
the point, one can implement a non-tail-recursive language in a
tail-recursive one.

-andy
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