Subject: Re: Package System and new dialect From: Erik Naggum <clerik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/07/18 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3109765263892238@naggum.no> * Barry Margolin | I think his point is that the user may be using the implementation's | default package, which includes their additions. And that package | presumably imports and exports the COMMON-LISP symbols. If the user | tries to use both that package and this dialect package, they'll | encounter the same conflicts he's complaining about. this appears to me to presuppose that this default package does the same kind of trickery with :EXPORT that I proposed for the dialect package. if it does, then it is _another_ "dialect" in the system that the user wishes to use. trying to use two different dialects at once is not what I would consider a high priority problem for the package system to solve. supporting one should reasonably be doable, though. now, I don't know how big this dialect is supposed to be, or whether it is just a bunch of macros and slightly different functions, but this all appears to me not to be a problem, but rather a question of wishing for a less elaborate solution. I have actually had a similar problem when looking at GNU Emacs Lisp compatibility in a Common Lisp Emacs. my solution was to enumerate the symbols that were semantically the same from Emacs Lisp to Common Lisp and leverage off of the standard Common Lisp functions when possible. in a few cases, however, I had to define a new function which merely called the Common Lisp function of the same name because the symbol was used for other things that shouldn't be exported. however, and for what it's worth, even this doesn't appear "broken" to me -- I'm still trying to figure out (on deeper and deeper levels) what the language was designed to do, and there doesn't seem to be any broken parts of the language relative to _some_ understanding of the intent. I think it's important to find the intentions that make the language what it became. different intentions must then implement their own ways, rather than break what works in ways contrary to their desires. #:Erik -- http://www.naggum.no/spam.html is about my spam protection scheme and how to guarantee that you reach me. in brief: if you reply to a news article of mine, be sure to include an In-Reply-To or References header with the message-ID of that message in it. otherwise, you need to read that page.