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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Bias in X3J13? (long and possibly boring)
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Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 19:15:51 GMT
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In article <Cy5F1E.4xq@rheged.dircon.co.uk> simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) writes:
>In article <3854ul$r5r@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu>,
>Scott Fahlman <sef@CS.CMU.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>Simon,
>>
>>This pile of conspiracy theories about Lisp (or "LisP" as you call it)
>>is truly amazing.  
>
>Scott
>
>You were very close to the centre of these events, whereas I was the
>other side of the Atlantic ocean and *very* much a bit player -- not
>involved at all until after the gunsmoke had started to clear.  [...]

>If you say that Symbolics, TI and Lucid all had a larger share of the
>LisP market than Xerox, I am sure that you must be right. Certainly,
>you have better information on this point than I. In this country,
>during the middle eighties, I was aware of probably 70 Xerox machines
>in active use in academia and industry, two Symbolics, and no
>Explorers (I always wanted a Symbolics, but could never pursuade
>anyone to buy me one). Were the ratios greatly different in the States?

We had a micro-Explorer in Edinburgh, as well as a Symbolics machine.
There were more Xerox machines chiefly because of the influence of
Henry Thompson.  If you subtract the Edinburgh D-machines from the
Uk total, there's a noticeable drop.

>I had not remembered, or had not appreciated, the fact that Xerox had
>been invited early, and had declined. It is certainly true that Danny
>Bobrow and Mark Stefik were involved in the CLOS specification
>process. The impression we got this side of the pond (and very far
>from the protagonists) was that this was not entirely a happy
>business.

Please: the impression *you* got on this side of the pond.
Maybe others had the same impression, but not everyone.

>>   This allegation explains both the comments system and the choice of
>>   LISP2, two decisions each of which are otherwise inexplicable. 

They are easily otherwise explicable, as I explained in an earlier
article.

>That isn't really fair. There are lots of technical points I disagree
>with in Common LISP. These two are particularly peculiar. Can you name
>one person currently writing on the design of functional languages who
>would defend the double name space? See for example Gabriel & Pitman
>in L&SC 1,1, in whose acknowlegements you are yourself credited.

You will note that points in favor of Lisp-2 are given in that
paper.

>Similarly, a comment system which effectively prevents in-core working
>*must* have been deliberately provocative. So many other potential
>solutions would have allowed both in-core and file-based development
>styles to co-exist.  This one did not. 

I think this is completely off the wall!  I don't believe it prevents
in-core working, but even if it does I don't believe this claim of
deliberate provocation.  Can it not be nailed once and for all?

Now, if Common Lisp's treatment of comments were a major problem,
it could have been raised at many points.  I don't recall it ever
being a significant issue in X3J13, and it certainly could have
been changed by X3J13 just as case-insensitivity was.

>>The case-insensitive reader has nothing to do with DoD requirments.
>
>If you are sure of this, you must be right.

If the Dod required case-insensitivity, how come we were able to
add case-sensitivity in X3J13?

-- jeff
