Re: Compilation and package system

[Glenn S. Burke <GSB@MIT-MC>]

    From: David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>

    Side-comment: I know of three other (besides Symbolics) Lisps that use the
    -*- convention for file attributes and have representatives on this mailing
    list.  I'm mildly surprised that none of them have spoken up so far.

I had thought i had sent a request to my PR department to send the
standard file-attribute-list blurb off to the common-lisp people, but
they must have slipped up.  Oh well -- you know what it's like in
these huge organizations.

NIL uses file attribute lists quite heavily.  The method in which they
are defined is (or at least was a year ago) an extension of how it was
done in Zetalisp, too.  They are most commonly used for package
specification, and secondarily for specifying the reader syntax, since
NIL has been incrementally converted to common-lisp reader syntax.
(This doesn't count "editor mode", but that's almost invariably "lisp"
for lisp code anyway.)