[no subject]

[Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>]

I don't think we want to restrict the yellow pages quite as much as
Fateman suggests.  In particular, we will want to include packages that
depend on other yellow pages packages and not just on the Common Lisp
kernel.  The only criteria should be (1) that everything that you need
in order to run a yellow-pages package should be available in Common
Lisp itself or somewhere in the yellow pages and (2) that all
inter-package dependencies are very clearly documented.  Maybe we need a
few more colors of pages to separate universally portable stuff, stuff
that depends on other packages, stuff that depends on
implementation-specific hacks, etc., but this color business is getting
out of hand.  The important thing is to make it clear exactly what the
game is for any given package and to try to keep things as coherently
organized as possible.

I agree with Fateman that things should not be described in the yellow
pages document unless the source code is available and can be freely
distributed with the yellow pages library.  We don't want to this
document to be an advertising service for proprietary packages, though
such advertising might form a useful document in its own right.

At present, a few of the planned yellow-pages packages are being written
or exist in earlier incarnations, but there is not as yet anything worth
calling a library.  Obviously, the yellow pages cannot exist until the
white pages have been stable for awhile and some correct Common Lisp
implementations are running.  We will want to be very careful with the
documentation of the first yellow pages release so as to get all of this
off on the right foot.

-- Scott