Case-sensitivity goals, policy and implementation

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 07:41, Raymond Toy wrote:
> >>>>> "James" == James Amundson <amundson@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> 
>     James> On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 09:25, Raymond Toy wrote:
>     >> READTABLE-CASE *PRINT-CASE*  Symbol-name  Output
>     >> --------------------------------------------------
>     >> :INVERT        :UPCASE       ZEBRA        zebra
>     >> :INVERT        :UPCASE       Zebra        Zebra
>     >> :INVERT        :UPCASE       zebra        ZEBRA

>     James> Hey! I think you have the right answer. I am glad you are thinking about
>     James> this more clearly than I was. The point I missed is that we want maxima
> 
> I wish I could claim I were a genious, but that would be false.  The
> nice people on #lisp on irc pointed me to this table.  I thought Lisp
> could do this, but didn't know how to make it happen.

I played with readtable-case years ago. In fact, I remember staring for
quite a while at the "zebra, Zebra, ZEBRA" table for quite a while. I
may have missed the significance of it all because the maxima source was
still mixed-case at that time.

> Actually I do care.  Then I don't have to quote stuff in Lisp for the
> most common usages.  No more |$%o42| to see what the output form
> is.  Hurray!

Yes, that would be great. I won't declare victory until I see the
implementation, though. I spent a little bit of time last night trying
to figure out where to stick the readtable-changing statements in the
maxima source, but I quickly became confused. If you feel like giving it
a shot, please do.

I also want to make sure that we don't somehow set ourselves up for
problems incorporating 3rd party lisp code in the future. I don't think
there should be a problem, but I want to make sure I haven't missed
something.

--Jim