Re: CLARIFICATION: [italics]package arguments.

[Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 16 Apr 87 16:20:21 mst
    From: John Diamant <diamant%hpfclp@hplabs.HP.COM>

							If, as I believe from
    my reading of Steele, package names are not allowed, then Symbolics is
    violating the standard, 

Would you please show us where in CLtL it says that accepting package
names is forbidden, and required to signal an error?

			    and thus lulling people into writing non-portable
    code (as you did).  We opted for a strict interpretation, because code
    developed on our machines will have a much better chance of being portable.

That's a very different question from "violating the standard".
Supersets of the standard are explicitly allowed; the word "Common" in
the name of "Common Lisp" is derived from the phrase "common subset".
Any implementation can make tradeoffs between providing extended
functionality, or providing only what's required by CLtL and nothing
more, in any area, depending on which criteria are more important in
that case.  Or they can provide a "mode" in which extensions are
disabled as much as possible, to help users assure portability of "pure
CL" code.  Conformity with the standard only means that an implementing
will correctly run correct CL programs.