Guidelines for the Standard

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

To: Christopher Fry <cfry at OZ.AI.MIT.EDU>

Well, we all realize that there are a lot of redundant forms here, and
that we could get away with any of several subsets.  ELT would not be
the one I would choose to keep, if I had to choose, but that's not
really the point.  The point is that people wanted these kept for
compatibility with older Lisps (and with older Lisp programmers).  I
don't think that many people maintaining large bodies of code would
share your enthusiasm for a radical simplification at this point.

I wouldn't mind seeing some style guidelines that point to certain of
these forms as the ones to use in new code, so that in a few years we
can get rid of the ones not in favor, but I don't think that such
guidelines ought to be part of a specification document.  Maybe we need
a companion document of style guidelines, though I suspect that getting
people to agree on these would be pretty bloody.

-- Scott