Errata for hyperspec?

Faré fahree at gmail.com
Fri Dec 15 17:06:02 UTC 2017


On Dec 15, 2017 06:57, "Chaitanya Gupta" <mail at chaitanyagupta.com> wrote:

On 15 December 2017 at 07:41, Faré <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>:Chaitanya Gupta
>
>>> Actually, I created "CLHS Errata" today by copying the contents of the
>>> section "Minor corrections to CLHS (errata)" in "Proposed ANSI
>>> Revisions and Clarifications" and re-organizing them a bit.
>>>
> After reading the pages it seems to me that you the topic is actually
> the same.

Mostly yes. However the "Proposed ANSI Revisions and Clarifications"
page also contains "Proposed changes to the standard". These are
neither errata nor clarifications. For example:

* Un-deprecate REMOVE-IF-NOT, DELETE-IF-NOT.
* Issue BOOLEAN-RETURNS: Many functions are specified to return true
when they could just as easily return T...
* Function FIND makes it impossible to find NIL in a sequence since
NIL will be returned regardless of the input sequence. The suggestion
is to add a second returned variable that is T if the element was
found and NIL if it was not - like in GETHASH. (The usual way to deal
with this is to use MEMBER instead.)

Depending on how much you squint, these small amendments can be viewed as
errata: it was an error, that does not reflect past or future usage, to
declare remove-if-not deprecated. The other issues are "gotchas" even if
they have no chances of being implemented or even gathering consensus.

Now you are right that they are indeed controversial proposals, and should
have a distinctive font or color, or a separate section.


So, I think it makes sense to split "Proposed ANSI Revisions and
Clarifications" in two pages:

* ANSI Clarifications and Errata -- this should strictly cover only
objective issues with the spec (mistakes, ambiguity, inconsistencies,
etc.), organized by section.
* Proposed ANSI Changes -- any suggested changes should go here.
Alternately, these can be merged into "Proposed Extensions to ANSI".

I will try to find some time today and tomorrow to set these two pages
up, and if they look good we can update "Proposed ANSI Revisions and
Clarifications" to link to these two.

Chaitanya

> The errata page should just be an alias for the "Proposed
> ANSI Revisions and Clarifications" page, that itself needs to be
> cleaned up: reorganized in section order. Things that are not strictly
> errata put in a small font or moved to another page, etc.
>
> Discussions for future standards (rather than Errata or Issues with
> the current one that can be addressed in its own context) have their
> own pages: http://www.cliki.net/Proposed%20Extensions%20To%20ANSI and
> http://www.cliki.net/Lisp%20-%20Next%20Generation
>
> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics•
http://fare.tunes.org
> The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and
this
> lie creeps from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people."  — Nietzsche
>



--
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