Concerning portability of Maxima to various Lisps,
Richard Fateman wrote:
> I think that this goal has been a substantial
> distraction, but as long as it hasn't required me
> to do much, I can't really argue.
I have to say I'm completely in agreement w/ Prof Fateman
on this point. The existence of multiple incompatible
versions of Lisp is a historical accident which, for
reasons beyond my comprehension, has been perpetrated
indefinitely. This situation doesn't help Maxima at all,
and the extremely valuable time of some contributors
is dissipated in resolving arbitrary minor differences.
Incidentally, I count 633 messages in the 2004 mailing
list archive (of 2176 in all) which mention at least one
of gcl, cmucl, clisp, or sbcl. I count 197 messages
which mention at least two Lisp versions.
(I did the counting with the nset functions. w00t!)
For what it's worth,
Robert Dodier
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