package proposal comments

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

A quick response to your comments (which reached me to late to be
reflected in the latest package proposal):

Transitive and Intransitive inheritance: The latest proposal provides
the user with a choice.

Copy vs. Pointer semantics: Both systems have problems.  I now believe
that copy semantics has worse problems, but I could be wrong.  In any
event, I'm reluctant to completely redo the proposal the other way
unless the problems with deep-binding inheritance are fatal.

Packages as the unit of loading and compilation:  We've been around this
a few times, and always come up with lots of problems.  Loading the
right set of files is a tricky and implementation-dependent business.  I
would like to see a comprehensive version-maintenance system in Common
Lisp someday (need a thesis topic?) but there is no way we're going to
get all that ironed out in time to make the first edition of the manual.

-- Scott