Question about the function DOCUMENTATION

[Stride 440 User <HELLER%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>]

	I have some questions about what the DOCUMENTATION function should
do about "exotic" doc-types. Under VAXLISP (DEC's Common LISP for VMS) and
on the TI Explorers' LISP, documentation strings are stored on a property
list under a documentation property of the symbol (VAXLISP also has a text
library for system supplied symbols and uses a special keyword symbol to
flag the fact that the documentation is in the library). Neither system
cares what doc-type is. Thus doc-type can be any symbol. Under Lucid's
Common LISP for the SUN Workstation, only the five doc-types mentioned in
the Common LISP manual are allowed. Lucid's Common LISP uses a structure
with five hash tables to store the documentation strings. The manual lists
five documentation types (variable, function, structure, type and setf), but
does not say whether these are the only allowed types.

	My question is:

	Is it intended that only the five doc-types be allowed (in which
case Lucid's Common LISP is correct) or merely the these five types are
used by the standard DEFxxx special-forms/macros supplied by Common LISP and
that user packages can add new documentation types as desired (in which case
Lucid's Common LISP is wrong)?

			Robert Heller
			Heller@UMass-CS.CSNET