Hi,
I support the idea of developing a "standard" common lisp library. Doing so will provide common lisp with some of the capabilities that today's programmers expect. Here are some thoughts on the requirements that such an effort might address:
- A common style of presentation should be used across the parts of the library. This will reduce the effort required of the programmer to understand the purpose of the library, and how its capabilities may be interfaced to his program.
- There needs to be a common and simple means for programs to reference the library. Just to illustrate (not to suggest a solution) URLs might be used to reference parts of the library.
- There should be consistency as to how the parts load into the lisp program. There should be a lightweight interface for querying a program to determine what parts and versions thereof it contains.
- There needs to be an orderly "lifecycle process" to track and express the maturity of parts of the library.
- We should address the most important parts first. It is likely that there would be some debate as to what those parts are. My list includes regular expressions, XML handling, http and web page production, Relation DB interfacing. Note that there already is good code in all of these areas!
IMO, doing anything like this will require someone with the requisite abilities assume a "Project Editor" role -- responsible for development of most of the work products (specification of the interfaces to the parts, a guide to using the library, etc.). It would also require that some of the lisp community's top talent contribute with recommendations, text, and critique of the work products.