cases. reader poll

[ucbvax:<Kim:jkf> (John Foderaro)]

Re:
    From: MOON at SCRC-TENEX
    I don't think we can satisfy everybody on this one.  Let's leave things
    the way they are unless someone comes up with a concrete, fully
    specified, practical proposal for a set of modes that collectively
    satisfy everyone and are not incompatible.


 Clearly the ball is in your court. Because you favor the status quo you can
 sit and wait forever for the proposal that 'satisfies everyone'.  You know
 as well as I that it will never come.  What I am proposing is a compromise,
 that is something which will require everyone to make a bit of a sacrifice
 so that no one group has to make a huge sacrifice.  I thought that this was
 the 'spirit' of common lisp, if I am wrong please let me know.  I look upon
 Lisp as a tool.  The one small change I've proposed will make it useable by
 a much larger communiity without affecting the current community very much.
   In case you've forgotten, this is what I propose:
   	1) the reader's case-sensitivity is alterable via a switch
	2) when it case-insensitive mode, upper case characters are
	   converted to lower case.
 While this may not be a 'fully specified, concrete proposal', it is the
 minimum required for common lisp to be usable to a case-sensitive user.
 Unless this is agreed upon, I see no reason to go into any greater detail.

 Does the common lisp committee have a formal way of polling its members
 about an issue? (I can't believe that decisions are made based on who flames
 the most on this mailing list).  If so I would like to find out the answer
 to these questions:
 1) Do you think that common lisp should be useable by the people who favor
    case-sensitive systems?

 2) Do you think that converting all characters to lower case is too great a
    sacrifice to be expected of case-insensitive users just to satisify
    case-sensitive users?

Just in case there is no formal way to poll the members, please send your
answers to me.  Be sure to indicate whether you consider yourself to be on
the official committee or whether you are just on this mailing list for fun.
If I get an overwhelming NO vote I will never bring up this subject again on
this mailing list.