I'm going to quit reading this newgroup for
a while.  It's more like a war zone than an
intellectual discussion.  

  Maybe this will have the effect of calming Erik
down although I fear that you're in for
reading a few more months of person insults
directed at me.

 I may check back in six months to see if
things have improved.

Fortunately, news readers have one great feature: Kill File. Put all
moronic jerks there and continue talking to guys who have something to
say.

What is exactly what I wanted to say using my broken English that is
not good enough for some purists posting to this group.

  Would you mind if I took credit for this by arguing that you ran away
  with you tail between your legs when you were simply asked to provide
  references for your increasingly psychotic claims and prove all the
  insane crap you claim about other people?

| Maybe this will have the effect of calming Erik down although I fear that
| you're in for reading a few more months of person insults directed at me.

  I think you have never grasped that you had the opportunity to discuss
  this on technical terms, but never took it.  You started calling people
  "religious" right off the bat as soon as they disagreed with you, and you
  have not stopped, even though several people, including myself, have put
  forth arguments that you _should_ have taken seriously if you had any
  other interest than making this a personal fight.  This has been personal
  for you all the time, because if* is a _psychological_ issue to you.  You
  lose such fights if you pick them with me, because I do not attack the
  person as _such_, which you have been doing all the time, I attack the
  person for something they _do_, for which the are actually responsible,
  but which they can quit doing, and then the criticism will cease, too.
  You have never understood this, and I think this explains why you behave
  so incredibly stupidly and are so self-destructive.  You _keep_ doing
  things that must be criticized, even according to your _own_ standards,
  and you are not quitting, but defending yourself, which means that the
  criticism can only intensify.  Your failure to grasp what you have been
  criticized for is acutally a pretty good sign that you are mentally ill
  and naturally think other people are, too.  Other people have, in fact,
  understood the arguments as they have been presented, and they are not
  aliases for me (I was amazed you would sink so low as to post anything
  _that_ stupid and paranoid).

| I may check back in six months to see if things have improved.

  While I expect your response to this message.  Surprise me and shut up
  for six months.

| I'm sorry that you had to endure all those flame postings.

  Like a bank robber who returns to the scene of the crime and wants to
  "apologize" for his transgressions and scaring the bejeezus out of
  innocent people, this is just too disgusting to watch.  You had a choice
  not to flame anyone to begin with.  You are just too childish to play the
  role of the "responsible" until you think you can win anything by it.

  Let us hope our freedom from your crappy articles in this newsgroup will
  be even longer than six months.  If necessary, I will have a few friends
  of mine stage a mock fight in the middle of May just to keep you away.

  Because he lost the fight he chose to pick, of course.  The worst losers
  always have to announce their withdrawal from the forum in which they
  have chosen to embarrass themselves beyond shame, rather than try to do
  something less embarrassing.  That is _why_ they are losers.  If they had
  had any notion of constructive use of the forum they leave, they would
  simply have done something constructive, instead of only telling _others_
  what to do when they cannot do it themselves.

  Nobody drove him out of the newsgroup.  Such "passiveness" is typical of
  people who cannot take charge of their own situation and fix whatever
  they do not like -- be it the "tone" in a newsgroup or a feature in a
  language -- it has to be somebody else's fault, and the more they "refuse
  to fix it", the more they can believe in conspiracies and bad people who
  make their lives miserable.  This is the way of the loser.  He has, in
  fact, _full_ control over his own actions and he could simply have quit
  posting his insane drivel, lies, and attacks.  He himself suggested he do
  that, but when he failed to keep his word (again, it was somebody else's
  fault), he chooses to make a stink and slam the door on his way out,
  believing that this would not be considered the ultimate act of cowardice.

  Now, Treat John Foderaro like an adult, not the child he appears to be.
  He does _not_ deserve anyone's pity for not being able to control himself
  and just do what he says and demands of others.  He has been using stupid
  intimidation techniques to "win" by destroying his opponents, but nobody
  wins that way.  You win a debate by being smarter than your opponent, not
  by being more stupid.  If somebody says something hurtful, it may create
  a sense of satisfaction to take revenge, but nothing has happened to that
  which hurt.  Idiots seek personal revenge.  Mature people seek justice.
  Smart people seek to understand and to outsmart their critics.  If you
  love Google like he does, check out how he treats people who makes _any_
  argument against his beliefs.  "That is *your* opinion" is just not a
  grown man's reaction to honest concern, and callling people who disagree
  with him a "cult" and "religious" is simply not something you do if you
  have a working brain and actually want to participate in a technical
  forum.  Why is this man the Chief Scientist at a major Common Lisp vendor?

  John Foderaro abused this forum to further his personal agendas, one of
  which is to undermine the ANSI CL standard, which was _supposed_ to be
  our common point of agreement, but which he has rejected.  John Foderaro
  has rejected this forum just as he has rejected Common Lisp, and _that_
  he did long before the standard was finalized.  His inability to convince
  a committee of really smart people to use lower-case symbol names (which
  would have been a really good idea), for instance, has been eating him up
  since before Common Lisp the Language was published in 1984 and he was
  not a member of the committee that produced the ANSI standard.  Why?
  Because it has _never_ been a technical issue to him that he could get
  reasonable people to agree with him on.  If it had been, I am certain the
  committee would have found ways to accomodate him beyond readtable-case
  and :invert, but you do not get people to work towards your goals if you
  call them "braindamaged" in working relationships.  It has become clear
  to me while trying to work with John Foderaro that certain things are not
  subject to solution: He _prefers_ to be griping about them forever rather
  than solve them in a compatible way.  This is _exactly_ what we have seen
  from him in this newsgroup.  For instance, readtables were added to the
  language in 1989, but not fully supported in Allegro CL until 2000.  This
  is the kind of thing in the standard that would have accomodated what he
  said he wanted and would have let people use a case-sensitive Common Lisp
  reader if they wanted to, but instead of this, they got set-case-mode, an
  ancient tool which works by _converting_ all the symbol names in the
  entire Lsp image, and which did not let people mix "modern mode" with
  readtable-case functionality until another engineer at Franz Inc did the
  work at my persistent request.  I believe that John Foderaro is as much
  an impediment to conformance in Franz Inc products as he is a detractor
  from community acceptance of the standard in this group.

  Now, for six months, if you believe that, we can work together, knowing
  that at least one fewer stupid jerk will waste our time quibbling over
  non-issues and going postal when somebody does not accept his hostile
  comments towards the foundation for the community.  No other programming
  language community has been subject to such rampant idiocy after they had
  achieved a standard.  People have either left the process or accepted the
  defeat and moved on with their lives -- griping about a failure to get a
  committee to agree with you is simply not worth decades of anger.  The
  end result is that those who have stayed have been _enthusiastic_ about
  the standard.  Somehow, the Common Lisp community has not achieved that
  level of community agreement about _its_ standard, and the person _most_
  responsible for this is John Foderaro, who has also been such a clear and
  present danger of filibustering and making serious problems in case we
  reopen the standard that it probably will never happen.  If people have
  tired of John Foderaro in this newsgroup, imagine what he will do when a
  committee does not agree with him.  If he could not get over upper-case
  symbol names in 15 years, nobody should expect that he does after a new
  committee vote on the matter.  When I made a point out of what I wanted
  from my Common Lisp vendor, it was precisely to ask John Foderaro (and
  Franz Inc by extension) to grow up and realize that he was hurting the
  community with his negative attitude towards what the community had
  already agreed upon.  If he does not accept that, he should simply find
  another community -- not that I think there is room for it -- or create
  one, but _not_ under the name Common Lisp.  The Open Source stuff he
  posts (which I do not trust enough to use and think looks like some
  ancient pre-Common Lisp that has little to do with good, modern Common
  Lisp style) is an attempt to build a new community to his own liking, but
  what I really do not understand is what attraction _Common_Lisp_ has to
  him when it is so braindamaged and stupidly designed as he claims.  Most
  of us can always find something we hate about something big and useful,
  but smart people figure out how to live with it in a constructive way.
  It appears that his griping about these misfeatures is his raison d'être,
  or at least for staying in the Common Lisp community.  Several trolls in
  comp.lang.lisp have shared this personality disorder and cannot live
  without complaining about something.  Six months without each of them
  would really be nice.  One less troll is a good thing.

Please, feel yourself honored for being located in my Kill File. You
will be there in good society.

Sometimes people bicker on a technical thread, but at least one has to
read dome posts in order to find such stuff.  By contrast, subject
headers for threads are highly visible to even the most cursory
visitors.  Consequently, I think it detracts especially for infighting
to be promoted to there.

I wish Fodarero hadn't started this useless non-programming thread.
But I'm also sad to see others, including you, Erik, indulging it as
if it were a legitimate conversation area.  There are a great many
technical and even political issues to be talking about.  But I think
"personal politics" is really not useful.  Please let's get back to
discussing the ample number of technical issues.

I particularly enjoy reading my old friends, Kent, Barmar, Scott
Mckay and a few others.  And I get a lot of insight reading Erik's,
and John's postings --- when they're on topic, and whether or
not I agree with them. [That's the carrot part]

But it does get annoying to wade through the bile, misguided
psychanalyses, and general flame wars --- typical of usenet,
yes, but particularly bad here ---- and, I agree with Kent that
it's doing a disservice to Lisp.

[Here comes the stick part]
And while there's a few people who dont quite rise to name-recognition
that seem to enjoy baiting and insulting Erik (and probably John too),
I really have to place the bulk of the blame on Erik and John.
Please dont be so thin-skinned; you dont have to defend every slight.
And go back to any several of your own postings, substituting your
name for the other.  How would _you_ feel if that were posted?

[and now to the arm-around-the-shoulder, commeradery part]

So, please, both of you (and anyone else this might apply to),

chill, mellow out a bit, get back on topic....
I'd really like to get back to lurking in peace, and reading
both your postings ....

  If people could be as decent in their flaming towards me as I am towards
  them, _much_ would improve.  I am not making this comment in jest.  If
  people stop being stupid (i.e., start to think) and/or stop doing stupid
  things (i.e., start to think), my criticism goes away.  This is not true
  of those who attack me, particularly not the last anti-social bastard.
  Some see this difference, others do not.  Those who see it, generally do
  not get into more than one fight, it tends to be short-lived, and they
  most certainly do _not_ harbor grudges for decades, but, having started
  or continued to think, do figure out what happened.  One day, I hope to
  be able to figure out which type of person a person is before the posted
  "proof" has made it much too abundantly clear.

I, Xah Lee, am also going to quit reading this newsgroup for a while, for i
felt it's more like a fart zone than intellectualization.

My dear lisp comrades, i'm sorry that you'll have to endure whatever ass who
will flame me for my stupid behavior.

However, i may check back six months to see if things have improved. May god
please let me not bump into another farewell saint.

By the way, it has been a long interest of mine to figure out the branches
of Christianity. I have done readings before, but it never got a permanent
footprint in my memory banks what is the difference between Catholic and
Protestant. Perhaps because i regard any form of religion a load of crap,
and particularly so Christianity. I happened to spend an hour today reading
the topic, and it became clear to me that one reason i didn't remember the
difference before is because my understanding of humanity and history is
significantly deeper than the 5 or so years back when i last read about the
ins and outs of Christian God believing sects. One thing that came away with
today's reading, is a good impression of the etymology of Protestant --
those who protested. From this simple mnemonic, i think i should be able to
easily recount an outline of the history of Christianity. Another thing i
also learned today, with some fairly good impression, is where
Fundamentalism originated. You know, them being those who believes that
woman are made out of a rib of man as a playmate and etc cetera.

The reason i happened to read about religion today is because one of my
co-worker, an Indian, is heading back to his home country for vacation.
Since i honestly never had a good look at India on the map, so we looked a
bit using mapquest.com

http://www.mapquest.com/cgi-bin/ia_find?link=school/worldatlas_index&...
orld

it turns out that mapquest has quick statistical summary of each country in
the world. For the past year the thought has went through my mind which
country is the best to live in. Naturally with my cosmopolitan interests, i
started to go through a few countries that have interested me, and read the
stat in some detail for the first time in my life. One thing let to another
as my behavior pattern, i started to do a basic survey of the wealthy
countries i'm interested in. Not as for picking a dwelling place or future
house purchase, but to satisfy my general interest as well. So, i jotted
down this list:

Country  GPD perl capita  literacy
Norway       $25.1k    100%
Sweden       $20.7k    99%
Finland      $21.0k    100%
England      $21.8k    100%
Ireland      $20.3k    98%
Germany      $22.7k    99%
Belgium      $23.9k    98%
Netherlands  $23.1k    99%
Austria      $23.4k    98%
Luxembourg   $34.2k    100%
France       $23.3k    99%
Italy        $21.4k    98%
Switzerland  $27.1k    99%
USA          $33.9k    97%
Canada       $23.3k    97%
Japane       $23.4k    99%
Signapore    $27.8k    91%
Australia    $22k      100%

The criterion is basically by wealth. (recall that one of my curiosity is to
see which country makes a better abode) Sloppily i'm basically wrote down
countries where the "GPD as per capita" is above $20000, hopping through the
the world map neighbor by neighbor. (i didn't bother with Africa.) There are
probably countries i've missed; please fill in if so.

Apparently, USA is the richest by far. What surprised me was Luxembourg,
where it is the only other country with more than $30k.

As it so happens, i have been somewhat of a traveler in my teen years. Lead
by my fucking mom and ex-stepdad with my brother and sister, hopping through
Paraguay, Guatemala each about half a year or more, and also a few years in
Canada.

What i really liked, is perhaps a website that has hundreds of random photos
of cities and every streets, restaurants, houses, people. For example, how
does cities and towns and streets in Norway looks like? How it differs from
Sweden, or the neighboring Finland? What's their style? Color? Cost?
(does anyone know a comprehensive website or such that i can check it out?)

ok, i'm rambling. My finger started walking the keyboard, and i might as
well let it run a few miles before i go to bed.

I was saying about trying to find out how different wealthy countries are
like. In particular, i always find Scandinavia very attractive. You know, we
all heard that they have particular open sex views and laws. I forgot if
it's all of them. Supposed they can fuck in daylight street without raising
much eyebrow. Y'now, perhaps it taboo to even mention in US of A, but they
Scans allow child porn too! (an upright person might utter "what the fuck
are these people?") (anyway, just exactly what's their laws on sex, can
anyone tell? I'm quite acquainted with US laws regarding many issues of sex.
(of course i can lookup the web quick, but right now i'm busy writing as i
haven't gotten to my many main points yet.))

Ok, so before i ramble tooo far, let me stop and summarize a few questions:

(1) does any one know a site, or perhaps ever a book, that has lots of
pictures of different wealthy countries befitting to live, introducing
perhaps the people, their cultures, and even law? For the least, i'm
interested to see pictures of different potential places to live.

(2) of my country list above as i talked about: if i missed a country,
please bring attention.

now back to my flow... i was saying that this Indian coworker prompted me to
look at maps, and for many reasons i started to survey all these countries
to sate few of my curiosities that has been around for a while, and for the
first time. Upon looking at the stat summary on mapquest.com's pages, the
stat includes also the country folk's literacy as a percentage, and also
religion. The literacy part turns out less interesting than the GPD, since
basically all wealthy or industrialized countries all have 98% or more
literacy. The other stat caught my eyes is religion. That's when it piqued
me to do a tiny research on the diff between Catholic and Protestant.
(another interesting thing to note today is that the Middle East are almost
100% Muslims. (and American are some %80 Christians. Apparently there's some
serious disagreement here.))

Now, another very interesting question i had for a while in my mind, and
also as part of the reason i'm writing this post is:

(3) Why America is so rich and prosperous?

As one can see from the country list i put above, American is basically the
richest country in the world, by quite far. (I don't know what's the story
with Luxembourg. Is it a special country with special count or something?
(if you know the answer, please do tell.))

Why is America prosperous? Is it because American has higher IQ? No. Is it
they work harder? Hardly. Is it because they have a rich land, rich natural
resource? Maybe... I don't really know the answer. I suppose, the the answer
to this question is long and non-trivial. Is there some general answer,
general consensus among perhaps accomplished economists or other respected
social science scientists? For since about few months ago, an educated guess
forms in my mind. I'm thinking, USA being so prosperous today is largely a
result of capitalism, in combination of good natural resources (land), and a
bit of luck (conquering and appropriation of indigenous American's wealth,
and how WW II turned out.). As a counter to my guess, can anyone come up
with a country that has been totally capitalist? (i.e. laissez-faire,
free-economy.)

I would be interested in answers to the above 3 rough questions.

PS due to some recent debate and pondering, while i was checking out
articles related to Christian from encyclopedias etc, it dawn on me that
America played no small part in harboring atheism. (I guess China is a big
source.) I love it! Go America! land of the free! (i'm an American citizen
by naturalization.)

 Xah
 x...@xahlee.org
 http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

Feel free to take a hike. I'm here to fulfill your wish.

the truth is, you are just an old man with nothing to do, whose ego is on
the balance of past glory and loneliness. (ain't that the truth?)

i really tire of your verbose mouth, from which effete meta comments keeps
flooding for nothing.

excuse me for not having done my home work, but just how old are you? 60?
70?

let's let all the good guys drop dead on comp.lang.lisp. Leave it to Naggum
and me. Let me count to three, and all you good people disappear, ok?

One,... Two, ... Three!

 Xah
 x...@xahlee.org
 http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

Shut your fucking face uncle fucka
You're a cock sucking ass licking uncle fucka
You're an uncle fucka, yes its true
Nobody fucks uncles quite like you

Shut your fucking face uncle fucka
You're the one that fucked your uncle, uncle fucka
You dont eat or sleep or mow the lawn,
You just fuck your uncle all day long

You're a boner biting bastard uncle fucka
You're an uncle fucka I must say
Well you fucked your uncle yesterday
Uncle fucka... thats U-N-C-L-E
fuck you Uncle Fuckaaaaaaaaaaaaa tonight...

Suck my balls!

(UNCLE FUCKA copy right 1998ish by Terrance & Phillip)

 Xah
 x...@xahlee.org
 http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

luxembourg have rather lax banking laws (remember the BCCI scandal
back in 1990?  i drove past the BCCI headquarters in luxembourg in
1991, so it was there.), and, i presume, low tax rates (gas was
cheaper there than in france).  this attacts money, both rich people
and just a general flow of money.  when you are near to a large money
flow, some tends to bleed out into your pocket.  luxembourg is not
quite independent, they share currency and defense with belgium.

GDP per capita is an *average*.  most of the time a median income is
quoted.  the income distribution is heavily skewed.  wealthy outliers
who make 100 or 1000 times more than the median really drive this
average upwards.  since luxembourg is so small, this could almost be a
statistical fluke.

luxembourg is a small country.  i think you could find many similar sized
area in any one of the countries you mentioned, which, in itself,
would have a very high average income.  for example, draw a luxembourg
sized area around bill gates or micheal eisner and see what the
average income is.

overall, luxembourg is a very nice place to live.  i do think their
salaries really are higher in median and average than their
surroundings.  however, it is not all *that* special.  unless you fit
the international banker profile, you could probably earn just as much
if not more somewhere else.  i wouldn't turn a good job in luxembourg
down though.  the quality of life there is high.

their sexual mores seem relaxed than in the US, but them the US is a
very prudish country in this topic.  they do (or at least did back in
1991) transmit RTL (radio television luxembourg) which featured risqué
shows like a game show where contesents and their models would strip.

hope this helps.

postings of Kent are _very_ valuable in this newsgroup,
actually if I am in hurry, I concentrate on threads
with a
1- interesting subject
or
2- with a reply of Kent

So if you are not happy and not civilised (as your next msg shows)
just let us in peace here.

Please note that I will not reply to your reply,
since I think that it will be an insult.

To begin with, Franz is a major Lisp vendor, and I often hear the term
"the only lisp vendor" when they're around--I don't know if that's
something they encourage or something they merely tolerate, but I
don't hear them disclaiming the term.  (I think Franz is composed of
an ok crew of folks, but I don't think they are the "only" lisp vendor
by any stretch, partly because I believe in the other commecial
vendors, and partly because I use the term vendor broadly to include
non-commercial implementors as well.  I find it upsetting to hear this
phrase uttered and moreso to hear it not rebutted when
otherwise-well-informed people are standing around.)  But I mention
this perception of exclusivity to to emphasize that some non-trivial
number of non-idiots seem to think that Franz IS the word on Lisp, so
there is a material potential for confusion here.  FURTHER, John posts
with @franz.com in his name, and his word is easily confused wiht
Franz's, especially since, again, no one from Franz ever posts to
disclaim his remarks about disclaim and to say expressly that the
formal position of Franz is different than his, nor even that there is
any substantial internal dissent.  AND FURTHER, John does play fast
and loose with the term "conforming" when the standard is, as I posted
the other day, really quite clear on what it means to be conforming,
and if he doesn't actively distribute the source to IF* with his code,
then he's not writing conforming, no matter how hard he claims
otherwise.  AND FURTHER, in a smaller community like ours, any voice
is, relatively speaking, louder than a voice in the C++ community.

I might cite Microsoft and its sometimes propensity, at least
historically (not sure of their current practice), to create market
disturbance by deviating slightly from standards such as HTML, Java,
etc. on the assertion that they know better, etc. [The analogy of
Franz to Microsoft is imperfect here; don't read "unfair monopoly"
into my remarks about Franz, please--"big" will suffice.]  It's hard
to know exactly how to apply the word "damage" to an abstract such as
a market, but I think it's fair to say that Microsoft has had a
splintering effect on the market that is less ignorable by those not
interested in their proprietary changes than would be a similar
deviation from another vendor, which people would almost certainly
reject more harshly if they took the same action.

So your remarks about "dissent" being a tolerable thing are well
taken, and I certainly believe their is and should be room for
dissent.  Even people like me, Barry Margolin, Steve Haflich, and
others who were there while it happened are known to voice dissent
of all kinds.   But dissent is different than condemnation, and
dissent from a major vendor/supplier rings louder than dissent from
a person on the street.  

Erik, of course, speaks more "colorfully" (shall we say) than some of
us might, and ascribes more intent than may be warranted (I can't say);
however, neither of those two things automatically make his observations,
at least on the matter effect, wrong.  We'll leave aside intent.

Even if John has no deathwish for CL (who am I to judge?), and even if
Franz does not mean to endorse him by its silence (again, how would I
know?), it can still be the case that a small community is left in
turmoil by being led to believe that it is appropriate to distribute
code that is called "conforming" when it doesn't satisfy the conformance
requirements.

The following paragraph is a major point I've been trying to make that
no one seems to have picked up on:

We had discussions about this very issue in the context of deciding on
the conformance requirements, though it was presented more abstractly.
Someone, I can't remember whom, but not one of the usual core bunch of
regulars, wanted to say that a program was conforming if the program
was capable of running on a conforming processor given some
appropriate compatibility package (which is what John is saying by
saying "go get the code yourself, and this code will run").  The same
can be said for Fortran.  I allege (and you'll just have to take my
word for it) that I can write a "compatibility package" that you can
load such that valid FORTRAN will run in CL.  I'd have to muck around
with the readtable a little to get it to activate when you just do an
ordinary call to LOAD, but I think it's a pretty straightforward
exercise if one has a fortran->lisp translator handy (and I've done
that before, so maybe you can give me that as a "given").  The
question then becomes--can I claim FORTRAN is conforming CL?  The
answer is no.  *If* I give you instead, a fortran->lisp translator,
the readtable hackery, and some code in fortran as a single module,
though, and it compiles out of the box with no mods in CL (and meets
any other requirements for conformance that might be irrelevant to
this discussion and glossed over for simplicity), then of course it's
now conforming.  Just as a program that reads any data or sets up any
custom syntax is conforming; it doesn't have to be in the reference
syntax to be conforming.  It doesn't have to avoid program-defined
macros and functions.  It just needs to *include* them itself.  It cannot,
according to the rules outlined in the spec, expect the user to go find
or create the appropriate support.  

To say otherwise is to potentially confuse the user community from an
apparent position of authority, unless due disclaimers are offered.

None of this should be construed as me just blindly defending Erik's
sometimes over-the-top rhetoric.  Just at least some part of his
underlying point.

Let me try to distill your long post into a short paraphrase: there is
potential harm done when someone posts disparaging remarks about the
standard wearing the mantle of authority that comes with an email address
from the major vendor.  (Let me know if that's not right.)

I actually agree with that.  However, I believe that whatever damage John
may have done (which we can guage by looking at the effects of much more
severe crticism from equally authoritative sources in the C++ community)
pales in comparison to the damage that was done by the absurd and extreme
overreactions that followed.

Let me reply to a few of your comments taken out of context:

But that's not the topic at hand.  What Erik is ranting about is John's
advocacy of a programming style that avoids the use of standard features
(cond, unless, when, loop) in favor of a non-standard one (if*).  It would
not placate Erik's position to have #+ALLEGRO(defmacro if* ...) in the
code.

(If you do the above conditional, you have to match it with a corresponding
import of the IF* symbol into your package in the #+Allegro case, btw.  
You don't want to depend on it just being there.  It's not present in the
CL package.)

This program, when combined with the code available from xxx, and
apart from the code contained in files yyy and zzz whcih contains
wrappers around implementation-dependent functionality, is intended to
be conforming CL.

(of course you need to define what `combined with' means - does it
mean
it has to be preloaded or ...).

I tend to use explicit USE lists for DEFPACKAGE to make this clearer
for myself - rather than

   (defpackage :mypackage
     ;; Everything works fine in tfb-cl but it will break in mere CL
systems...
     (:export ...))

I say

   (defpackage :mypackage
     (:use :cl) ; note, *only* CL
     ;; Now here are the nonconformances
     ;; we need tfb-hax for things like ABEND-PROTECT
     (:use :tfb-hax)
     ...)

Someone mentioned that making dependencies on platform-specific stuff
that is not in the standard is ok (sockets and threading, for
example), but that depending on something that is just a standard
stuff in disguise is not (the famous historical conditional from Franz
Lisp).

;;- This code in this file obeys the Lisp Coding Standard found in
;;- http://www.franz.com/~jkf/coding_standards.html

I see this as:

    This code in this file obeys what I think should have been a
    Common Lisp standard, differences from Common Lisp described in
    [uri above].

Users may modify the code but _must_ obey that coding standard, which
is not The Common Lisp Standard (the ANSI one, because there is no
other). And hence if anyone thinks it's junk in there, they are not
free to improve it or even discuss whether something is an improvement
-- you either obey what the author thinks is best or go code something
else.

Some people here argue that if they can create their favorite Lisp
dialect of past in a conforming Common Lisp program then it is good to
do it. I think it is not.

----

I may be not grasping the level at which you wanted this discussion to
evolve, but we cannot move to higher levels until the issues at lover
levels are not settled down. If we all agree that _Commn Lisp_ is the
base from which we move on then we can move on. People who think that
Common Lisp should be changed before we move on should either rethink
their values and accept The Standard as a starting point or create
another community and leave Common Lisp alone. The acceptance of
Common Lisp as the authority should have been implicit for people
wanting to be a part of the Common Lisp community, but it seems that
somehow some people don't understand it.

--
Janis Dzerins

What makes _me_ nervous is that I posted _twice_ about

(make-pathname :name "FOO" :case :common :defaults #P"/home/kent/")

(should it return #p"/HOME/KENT/foo" like in CMUCL and ACL or
#p"/home/kent/foo" as in LW) and _nobody_ answered _anything_.

You said on <clisp-list> that you support the LW way and offered a
reasonable argument and said that you are interested in the opposing
rationale.  Isn't this _the_ forum for such a discussion?

Speaking as a user, though, your example above is misleading, as at
least here (Debian CMUCLs 2.4.19 and 3.0.4):

* (make-pathname :name "FOO" :case :common :defaults #p"/home/kent/")

#p"/home/kent/foo"

As I think everyone expects.

Are you basing your queries on the tests I posted a few months ago?
Could you give me a reference?

Thanks,