The J13 covers the family of Lisp languages, although nearly all the TC's work focusses on the Common Lisp dialect. J13 develops and maintains X3.226-1994, the American National Standard for Information Technology -- Programming Language Common Lisp. Other Lisp dialect communities are either unconcerned with standardization or are standardized under different SDOs.
J13 maintained quorum in 2002 and had a single meeting in August 2002. The principal of discussion issue was consideration of possible project proposals for new areas of standardization. A few potential subjects were left for for further exploration, but none have developed into a concrete project proposal.
However, during the past year there has been a significant progress outside the committee in writing a comprehensive conformance suite for the 1994 ANS. This is something that has long been lacking, and has already been used to good effect tightening conformance of some popular implementations. However, the conformance suite has also uncovered a few unintended and harmful consequences in certain obscure areas of the ANS. In some cases these implications were simply missed by the original drafters; in others, the project editor apparently misconstrued certain details of TC actions, and these alteractions also were not identified in proofing the 1994 standard.
No known implementation conformed to these unintended details in the decade since the ANS was adopted, of course, and they are mostly uninmportant exceptional or boundary cases. But some implementations have already undertaken to come into conformance. Unfortunately, the particular changes have no practical benefit to the language or its users (beyond conformance to the standard) and have efficiency or complexity costs that are objectively harmful to the language. A Project Proposal is now being considered for an Amendment specifically to address these issues, and limited to these issues.
There were no accomplishments of note in the past year.
See [2] above. Segments of the lisp community tends toward vehemence and language fundamentalism; managing this during a project to alter the sacred writ of the ANS may be a problem.
| Meeting Number | Date | Location |
| n/a | August 8, 2002 |
Internet chat from four countries on
three continents |
A meeting by electronic chat is planned for middle or late summer,
exact scheduling to be determined according to the schedules of the participants.
| Position (and training date) | Name and organization represented |
| Chair | Steven M. Haflich, Franz Inc. last training May 16, 2002 |
| Vice Chair | unoccupied |
| Secretary | rotates |
| International Representative | currently unoccupied, as there are currently
no active international liaisons. |
| Vocabulary Representative | unoccupied -- no active projects |
| Haflich, Steve | Franz Inc | Voting | Principal | Franz Inc 555 12th Street #1450 Oakland, CA 94607 USA |
Email: smh@franz.com Phone: 510-452-2000 x157 Fax: 510-452-0182 |
| Layer, Kevin | Franz Inc | Voting | Alternate | Franz Inc 555 12th Street #1450 Oakland, CA 94607 USA |
Email: layer@franz.com Phone: 510-452-2000 Fax: 510-452-0182 |
| Kuroda, Hisao | MSI | Voting | Principal | Mathematical Systems, Inc. 10F Four Seasons Building 2-4-3 Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0022 Japan |
Email: kuroda@msi.co.jp Phone: 81 3-3358-1701 Fax: 81 3-3358-1727 |
| Simmons, Martin | Xanalys | Voting | Principal | Xanalys, Inc. Barrington Hall Barrington, Cambridge CB2 5RG United Kingdom |
Email: martin@xanalys.com Phone: |
| Males, Kevin | Xanalys | Voting | Alternate | Xanalys, Inc. Barrington Hall Barrington, Cambridge CB2 5RG United Kingdom |
Email: kevinm@xanalys.com Phone: |
| Corman, Roger | Corman Technologies | Voting | Principal | Corman Technologies 3445 Baldwin Way Santa Rosa, CA 95403 |
Email: roger@corman.net Phone: 707-541-2544 |
| Raymond de Lacaze | self | Voting | Principal | 230 West 55th St., Apt. #25C New York, NY 10019 |
Email: odelaray@hotmail.com Phone: 212-956-0719 Fax: 212-956-0719 |
Implementation and exploitation of current standardized Internet protocols (e.g. HTTP servers, XML languages, SOAP) remains a current area of high activity. Generally, there is no perceived need at this time for standardizing Common Lisp bindings onto these facilities. The lack of effective standardization of lower-level support layers (e.g. threading, sockets and I18N) is perceived as a greater problem. But whether any significant body of willing workers will coalesce around any of these areas remains a question.
The only project poroposal that is objectively likely is a cleanup of certain obscure details in the existing ANS, as described in [1] above.
J13 would not be possible without near complete reliance on email and internet chat. The face-to-face plenum meeting is a thing of the past. Something is lost in TC cohesiveness and fellowship in the process, but there is no remedy for it. Sic transit gloria mundi.