[Gcl-devel] Odd idea...

[C Y]

I'll blame this idea on Tim Daly, since he's been infecting me with the
literate programming bug - I have a rather outlandish question for the
GCL devs:

Is there any chance that the GCL source code could be combined with the
last ANSI draft spec into literate documents?  Obviously this wouldn't
be either an official ANSI standard or even a draft but if it is
permissible to include and work off of the draft of the spec, perhaps
the spec, updates to the spec based on current standards, the code that
implements any given part of the spec, and Paul's test that that part
is functioning correctly could all be woven together into a coherent,
self documenting whole.  

My other question - would this be a legal use of the ANSI draft
documents?  The best answer I have found to this question thus far
seems to be this post:  
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/5828f58fa34e2ce8 
which basically seems to say it's unclear.

Would it be possible to contact the interested parties and try to
formally get the draft spec under public domain?  Obviously a major
expensive effort wouldn't be workable but if the intent was already to
release it as public domain perhaps finalizing that release could still
be done.

Cheers,
CY

P.S. - The above question actually raises another one - since in one
sense it could be argued that any compliant ANSI Lisp distribution in
effect is an instance of the spec, how can one be ANSI compliant and
still open source, given the ANSI folks keep control over the spec
documents and (AFAIK) prevent republishing them?  Is it only human
readable versions of the spec that have trouble?  How "different" does
some instance of the spec have to be to be in the clear?


                
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