Namespaces

[shebs%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa (Stanley Shebs)]

While the idea of defining namespaces is intriguing, I don't think we're
in a position to try to standardize on it.  The notion of "namespace"
is pretty informal - we talk about namespaces for variables, for functions,
for packages, etc.  But recall that separate namespaces for variables
and functions implies that symbol-function and symbol-value are different,
plus we have an flet in addition to let, as well as a great many other
consequences.  Being able to define new namespaces and attach interesting
semantics to them is tantamount to being able to make an implementation
switch from Common Lisp to Scheme and back at the tweak of a flag.  I haven't
seen anybody do this! (although it would make an interesting paper).

So since namespace definition is a fairly heavy-duty research issue,
we shouldn't try to standardize on it, unless someone has an absolutely
brilliant proposal...

							stan