Yes.

I don't know if it will help or hurt to allude to the cultural divide
between the capitalist/libertarian state and the socialist/communist state,
but I'm going to try to allude to this just in case.  It MAY actually be
that because of the historical difference between your country and ours,
you see this issue differently than we do.  I'm not going to try to assert
rightness or wrongness of either system here, but rather use the differences
in point of view to show how, in context (i.e., in a situation where you take
the rightness of one or the other world model as an axiomatic given),
the answer to your question above might come out different.

I sometimes refer to the language design community as the "benevolent state"
making all kinds of rules for how people should behave.  But rules are not
implementations.  Making a rule that says "everyone will be fed" does not
make them fed.  What makes them fed is feeding them.  Rules do get broken.
And when you make a rule that all CL implementations must provide feature X,
SOMETIMES you get a lot of implementations with feature X, and other times you
get SOME conforming implementations with feature X and some non-conforming
(i.e., would-be conforming) implementations without feature X.

Certainly we tried in the design of the language to require a LOT of vendors.
We though this would stretch the set of things vendors would do.  But we
could not, through our votes, make vendors have infinite money/patience,
and so there is a limit to what we can do.

For what it's worth, I call this model of language design, where the people
expect all implementations to implement the standard, and the standard is
dictated by philosophically inclined people without regard to to cost, the
"socialist" design principle.  I think it has traditionally worked, but mostly
because it used to be that vendors had large amounts of money and the bulk
of programmer resources.  Over time, the wealth and programmer talent has
moved a lot to the market.  Increasingly, over time, I have felt that users
should look not to governmental bodies but to the entreprenuerial marketplace
for solutions.  I call this a "capitalist" design principle.

The good thing about the socialist model is that everyone doing CL has
certain properties.  The bad thing is you ahve created a bar so high
that not everyone can do a CL.  The good thing about the capitalist model
is that more people are offering CL, but the bad thing is that there are
more differences in what that means.  

I like the capitalist model better these days, though I'm glad we went
through the other model getting to where we are because it gives us a large
base to build upon.   I think the capitalist model acknowledges that some
parts of the market don't NEED all that might be required, and so it allows
partial implementations to compete in places where they match features offered
with features requiresd.

Suppose we *did* require every CL implementation to have international
char set support and suppose I had an application that didn't need it.
I might *still* buy the same lisp to do it, the only thing that would
be changed is that it wouldn't be marketed as a conforming CL under
your proposed standard because it had no support for the feature I
didn't need.  By contrast, if I need international char set support
now and some implementations don't have it, I don't just buy the
deficient implementation EVEN IF it satisfies the spec.  An
implementation, to get bought by me, needs to satsify not only
standards but MY requirements.

So when the dust all settles, I think the only question which materially
remains is this:  to what extent are vendors encouraged by the withholding
of the word "conforming" if you increase the set of requirements vs. to what
extent is the community fragmented by denying the word "conforming" in cases
where it will not be met.

For example, we do not require a compiler right now in CL.  Most
implementations provide one but it's left to the market.  We could
require one.  But what would that serve but to tie the hands of
vendors?  A vendor who has enough customers without a compiler might
as well continue in that market if they're happy. It steals nothing
from anyone else, and the sense of community size is enlarged by our
embracing that activity.  To make an ivory tower that no one can climb
might raise our level of respect among some, but it might exclude
others.  I just don't see doing it.  But I can understand how another
might think differently.  In the end, I think it has to come down to
differences of political theories about how to motivate people.  Just
as in business the Theory X/Theory Y debate rages about whether
carrots held in front of employees or sticks waved behind them are
better ways to motivate good work.  The fact is that there is no clear
answer.  At least with employees, you can come up with solutions on a
case-by-case basis.  With standards, the complication is that you
either do or don't conform...

- - - -

Moving on, my words are the double-indented ones here:

 To reply yes, enter one of: Si', si, s
 To reply no, enter one of: No, n

In some cases, people would want to provide a different list if they thought
someone would see it than if they didn't.  For example, I might use
 (... "si", "si'", "s'i" ...)
if it were not to be presented, but (a) some users would be offended/confused
to see these stupid presentations of accents and I might want to suppress
them (allowing fewer possible responses) if I thought they would be seen
than if I thought not, and (b) some users would be very confused by "si" since
it means "if".  A lazy user might write "si" to mean "si'" if prompted for
"si'" or "no", but no user would want to see "si" because it would suggest
that you were saying "reply yes (or if) or no".  

So what I'm saying is that your remark about "print" is the only
question to be asked, and I'm assuming it's a more complex space.
That is, that the question of what to print in a dialog is only the
tip of the iceberg.  Rather than patch the TITANIC-YES-OR-NO-P
function to ferry passengers another day, I'd rather it sink in the
icy waters of the north atlantic (though, of course I'd send someone
to pick up the people lifeboats) and that a better replacement be
built.  

  I did not think that.  That you think so based on my response is _very_
  interesting.  You are not smart enough to understand that you were
  deliberately tricked into revealing your real position and purpose with a
  response that would feel hostile only if _you_ were a bad person.  Thank
  you for choosing the kind of response that leaves no doubt about you.

| Why would attacking Naggum be _interesting_ ? To whom ?

  Good.  You are defending yourself, now.  This is very good evidence of
  _conscious_ wrong-doing on your part.  You are a very bad person, which I
  wanted you to come out and tell us yourself, and you did, admirably.

  Your insistence on talking about me just because I point out that your
  considerable personality disorders are (sarcastically) _interesting_ is
  extremely revealing.  I can only thank you for relieving me of any need
  to demonstrate how you are a very bad person.  And you will continue to
  provide us with more evidence of your very bad character, if you are the
  character I judge you to be.  Go ahead, now.

| If attacking Naggum [...]

  Get psychiatric help, Jean-François Brouillet.  You need it.  This is
  obvious to me now, and it will be obvious to everyone else in a short
  while.  Please keep up the self-incrimination for the benefit of those
  who might still think that you could be normal, decent human being.

  _Please_ try to understand there is no _one_ correct way to compare
  strings.  Monoculturalism is simply wrong.  That is why one chooses
  technical specifications that have arbitrary, but very predictable
  results.  Making string< attempt to do culturally sensitive string
  comparisons would _always_ be wrong, because it is not specified to do
  that, was never intended to do that, and should never be intended or
  specified to do that if language designers do their job.  The only
  reasonable way to do string< is to do it with repeated char<, which can
  only be done as < on char-code of the two characters (in practice, with
  machine less-than operations on the internal representation of the
  character object).  In Common Lisp, that is precisely what it does.

  The only _correct_ way to do culturally sensitive sorting is to maintain
  a collation information string in addition to the "data" string.  If you
  are unwilling to do this work, whoever employed you should get a refund,
  and if you did not know, whoever you paid for your education should be
  prepared to give you a refund, unless he demonstrated that you failed to
  do what you were told.

  So here is a hint: If you want to compare two strings with culturally
  sensitive contents, you need to know: which language both are in, how to
  convert strings of that language into collation information strings, and
  then compare the result with string<.  Do _not_ try to roll this into one
  function or make assumptions about the language in use.  And _please_
  note that string< does not work for English, either.  English is _not_
  spelled correctly only using ASCII.

  Why are you behaving as if you are _envious_ of the fact that Common Lisp
  happened to be defined in the United States?  Nobody forces you to use
  the functions that do not fill your needs.  Please quit making it anybody
  else's problems -- just go implement what you think is right.  (Whether
  you share it with others afterwards is not for me to suggest, but if you
  are concerned with the proper sorting of your natural language, it would
  seem reasonable to expect you to publish it, for pay or not.)

  Just define a new function that does what you think it should do.  Why is
  this so hard for you to accept?  Why must you complain that somebody else
  has done something that is satisfactory for them?

  Just _do_ it!  Quit your useless whining and write specifications for the
  functions you need, then implement them.  That you cannot get it for free
  is not anybody else's problem.

  If the conclusion is that Common Lisp is unsuitable for international
  applications without _additional_ localization support, that would be a
  point from which we could progress.  If people complain endlessly that
  what it does is _wrong_, we have no point from which progress can be
  made, because some people are happy with what it does and do _not_ think
  it is doing anything wrong, so you would effectively secede in order to
  get _your_ natural-language support.  This is insane.

  Write a white paper on how to write properly localized Common Lisp code
  if you are _actually_ concerned about this, not just about hearing
  yourself whine in public.  Deliver a paper at a conference, get people
  who have worked in this field for years to help you if you want to have
  the work done.  Be prepared to see that your particular culture becomes
  "one of many" without privileges, and be prepared to understand that
  American English is _not_ privileged today, either.  There is nothing
  here to whine about, just useful work that needs to be done.  Just Do It.

  If you do not want to do the work, please let us know.  A good way to do
  this would be keep whining uselessly about things you do not understand.

[
  Here were thoughts about socialist/capitalist models of language
  development. I removed them after very long thoughts because of their
  size.
  Definitly, Kent, you should write a short resume after every such a tale
  which resume could be used in replies by yours correspondents.
] :)

It was very interesting.  

OK. I see your point. I can not tell that I agree with it absolutly (may
be I have to read it again) but I admit that it at least have a right for
a life. :)

...

I'm comparing them to FIXNUMs and FLOATs.
...

http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.1/doc/pages/operators/ex...

accepts a string and a "ucet" object (for Unicode Collation Element
Table) and returns a string which can be passed to STRING< or STRING>
along with another STRING-SORT-KEY-processed string.  A default ucet
object exists which allows for normal Unicode ordering, or the user
can use EXCL:PARSE-UCET to create a new ucet-object:

http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.1/doc/pages/operators/ex...

http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.1/doc/iacl.htm#collation-1

J.B.

Bookstores are much more of a pain, because they tend to be
inconsistent, which is when you can't find things.

  Oh, so Jean-François Brouillet and "MJ Ray" are the same person.  That
  explains a lot.  Thank you for this information -- I did not know.

I have a lisp chess program i wrote/am writing.  I was refering to it
on the chess programmer board, and one of the other posters really
went after me for being so stupid as to program it in lisp, saying C++
would be much faster, easier to write, simpler, blah blah.  In the
process he made it clear he didn't know any lisp at all.  You know,
the usual.

I decided to redo a section of my lisp code in C++ to see what kind of
speed sacrifice i was making.  I used C++ STL, and compiled with g++
no optimization, the lisp version with CMUCL with no optimizations.
The C++ version used vectors, the lisp version lists.

The lisp version was 30% faster.

I was blown away.  I cranked up the optimizations on both versions,
-O4 in the g++ code, and (speed 3)(safety 0) in the LISP version.  Now
the lisp code was only about 5% faster.

The C version was also about 50% longer and took several times longer
to write.

This makes my job ( in which i have to use PRO-C ) even more
depressing. :)

Truth be told, I don't know who "MJ Ray" is, and I'm not even sure
I remember any of his posts. But yours...

In fact, I don't even need to remember anything, Naggum, you're
so predictable. Where's the fun with you? You're a way too easy target...

                        BUT A DEAD BORING ONE

Naggum: open your eyes, and close your mouth. That's the best advice
you'll have for free in years. Leave c.l.l. in peace, and I promise to
step down from my soapbox.

It seems to me that you don't!

The question is _not_ to decide whether I'm a good or a bad person.
Nobody cares.

My only goal is to get you to

     SHUT UP BECAUSE YOU'RE WASTING EVERYONE'S BANDWIDTH
    AND JEOPARDIZING OUR READ TIME WHICH IS NOT SO COPIOUS

Go create an alt.naggum.fans but leave us alone! I've got a lot to
learn in Common Lisp, and your sudden irruptions in various threads
prevents people from carrying on with exposing their ideas.

                YOU'RE SUCH A GREAT INHIBITOR

We don't _need_ Naggum.

   Mais, merde enfin. Il fait vraiment chier ce connard. J'en ai
   rien à taper de ce que ducon Naggum pense. Moi? Je veux voire
   du Lisp dans comp.lang.lisp.

   Et être débarassé de ce psychopathe de Naggum qui vient polluer
   toutes les discussions!

   C'est trop demander peut-être ?

Naggum: GO HOME! take a vacation! KILL YOURSELF! leave us alone.
I am fed-up! I want to learn. NOT READ ABOUT THE EMPTYNESS OF
NAGGUM SKULL !

GO AWAY

--
Jean-François Brouillet

On 3/1/02 15:55, in article 3219062154566...@naggum.net, "Erik Naggum"

* Erik Naggum

  I was sarcastically pointing out that Israel Ray Thomas is unable to keep
  track of anything, not even what he enjoys, which is a very useful thing
  to know about him.  I also enjoy seeing that you are unable to detect
  sarcasm, as that is very consistent with your character.  And the reason
  you think I am so predictable is that you see only what you want to see
  and you cannot even _imagine_ anything but one-dimensional personalities,
  another very consistent trait for your particular kind.  If you believe
  that _you_ bring anything new to this forum, try again.  Hateful scum
  like you have been coming and going for years, having exposed yourself in
  ways that will embarrass yourself and your family for years to come, in
  full public view.  Some of you recover, but you will not get that chance.

| Leave c.l.l. in peace, and I promise to step down from my soapbox.

  Within the next 48 hours, you will die in a car accident, so there is no
  need for you to make these sorts of silly threats.  I shall remember you
  as you chose to present yourself to me.  Good riddance to you.

  Your pain will soon be over.  In the short time you have left among the
  living, you could do something you can enjoy, or you can continue to
  scream in agony in front of your computer, but then again, you had that
  choice all your life, and then you begin posting to comp.lang.lisp.

You spend your time answering to problems that you invent, and
not addressing the crux of the matter. That's a very skilled side-tracking
technique which I recognize even from a distance.

In case I'm still alive in 48 hours, I will endeavour to do the
following:

  Each further day that God still allows me to live ;-), and assuming
  Cretin-Naggum didn't grow any further brain cell atom on that day, and
  tried by one post or another to either inhibit or ridicule some poster
  idea, I will post an empty message to c.l.l reading:

  AND YET ANOTHER DAY HAS PASSED AND NAGGUM STILL ANNOYS AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY

 (or some variation thereof)

And I thought I knew what "diehard" meant ;-(

You're passé Naggum. There's no hope for you. Do yourself a favour:
shut up. Is it because I'm younger than you and can see things that
your senility prevents you from understanding? Is it because I'm
older than you and your youth hasn't taught you any of the core values
in life?

But even cockroaches seems to be much more decent creatures.

You're an intellectual parasite, Naggum, a Trojan horse using c.l.l
to spread doom and gloom. No one _needs_ you.

Since I'm very prompt to sympathise, I find it very sad to understand
what kind of loneliness you find yourself with, but I'm really sorry for
you, Naggum, there's no cure for that one. Too bad that your genes have
built you in such a way that you'll never understand, but please, for
them, don't raise children, they might otherwise inherit that terrible
disease.

--
Jean-François Brouillet

On 3/1/02 22:42, in article 3219086537399...@naggum.net, "Erik Naggum"

Poor little shitty thing! When you read that a thread title
is "Nagging Naggum", you don't need to stretch your imagination
beyond inhumane limits to kind of guess we're not talking
16th century litterature!

--
Jean-François Brouillet

On 3/1/02 23:08, in article
Zv5Z7.263826$Ga5.47908...@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com, "Coby Beck"

J.B.

 "Today I fixed two f***ing naggums in my code" or
 "The marketing department has added two naggums to their bullet list" ?

But then we might as well use him for the posterity, as in:

(defun naggum (x) x)    ; identity
(defun naggum () nil)   ; tautology
(defun naggum (x)       ; non elimination of abusive
    (naggum (1+ x)))        ; self-recursion