Creepy Crawlers in the Package system

[ELIOT@cs.umass.edu]

Some of the comments I have read sound like things people
say who spend all of their time *implementing* Lisp and
none of their time *using* Lisp.

I have been (trying to) write programs using KnowledgeCraft
and Kee.  You can be pretty sure that I am going to USE-PACKAGE
these system's packages.  Each of them provides Hundreds of
additional functions that might get used.  I am a pretty
fast typist, but I still don't plan to individually import
every symbol that I am going to use.

A further problem arose with the GRAPPLE system, which
is built on KnowledgeCraft.  Its been a year and a half
since I was involved in that, but basically the system
really wants to have transitively exported symbols.
GRAPPLE is supposed to be something that another system
(in its package) would be layered on top of.  That system
would (use-package 'grapple) but it would also have to use
all of the KnowldegCraft packages (5 or 6 of them).
There might have been some kludge with Grapple writing
code that called K.C. functions or whatever.  I don't
remember exactly why this happened, but the non-transitive
nature of packages/exporting was a real pain.

I think this is actually the most important situation.
When using a large software package there are just too
many symbols around to be a purist.

Please add my vote to the list of those who think the
package system is something the cat dragged in from the
storm, but don't really know what to do about it.
	Chris Eliot