[no subject]

[Kent M. Pitman <KMP at MIT-MC>]

I only suggested a mechanism, not a syntax. The example I gave was only to
illustrate how little the system had to support in order to leave this in
the user domain. The advantage is that it would allow users to abstract their
declarations in whatever way they felt most convenient. At some later time,
we might standardize on someone's particular suggestions after we'd had a
chance to try things out. I'm just a little concerned about prematurely
selecting too much arbitrary syntax for declarations. Declarations are the 
sort of thing that are hard to plan for because you just never know what you're
going to want to declare or on what basis you're going to want to declare it
when you talk about portable code. Suppose it later becomes interesting to
make certain kinds of declarations based on other kinds of conditions than
just operating system or site. You'd have to introduce new kinds of arbitrary
syntax, whereas my proposal by its very vagueness and generality allows for
some flexibility in expanding the things one can declare without requiring a
modification to the common-lisp spec.