Jack Unrue  <no.spam@example.tld> wrote:
+---------------
| rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:
| >  1. Is substantially "smaller" than full ANSI CL by at least *some*
| >     "obvious"/noncontroversial metric(s). [Else what's the point?!? ...]
| >  2. Is "large enough" to be generally useful for at least *some*
| >     area(s) of interest -- say, "scripting", one-off programs, ...
| 
| I think these two pose a question that has to be answered first:
| are there in fact obvious/noncontroversial metrics, and if so,
| what are they?
+---------------

Fair enough, but one doesn't have to get bogged down in excess
precision here. Fairly "soft" metrics would do fine, for me
at least. Esthetics *is* an important part of what I'm aiming for.
That is, one would rather that others look at the result and say,
"Ooh! That's cute" instead of "Yucckk! That's a total crock!".
So the overall "shape" of the subset has to be at least somewhat
"pleasing" to the eye of most experienced CL-ers. [Sorry for all
the scare quotes, but as you note, these are precisely the terms
which are ill-defined.]

We *do* have one extant example of a "small" Lisp which has
been found useful by many: Scheme. My question is whether
there is any Common Lisp subset meeting CLHS 1.7 which would
be similarly useful and not *too* ugly!  ;-}


-Rob

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Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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