Symbols, strings and case-sensitive Maxima

Everyone,

Now that the new case sensitivity scheme has been implemented, I see a
problem that I did not anticipate. In the new scheme, symbols are stored
in inverted case. Fine. Some care needs to be taken when printing
symbols, but that's it. Manipulations from Lisp are generally pretty
transparent -- after all, most people enter lower-case lisp code, only
to have it stored in upper case. The problem is in the way Maxima treats
strings: Maxima strings are really symbols. That means that strings are
also stored in inverted case. I think most people will find that pretty
counter-intuitive. It is also not the way Lisp operates in general.

Do we need to start treating strings as strings? I wasn't planning to do
that at this point. I am just starting to think about the problem, so I
don't have an answer. It would be helpful if others started thinking
about this problem, too.

--Jim