February 1987

Dear Lisp Friends:

Welcome to our forum for technical interchange. Lisp Pointers intends to provide a rapid-turnaround channel that requires more thought and preparation than a typical electronic bulletin-board message, but less stringent than time-consuming referee and review process typical of most professional journals.

Our focus in Lisp Pointers will be on the pragmatic side, but we want to encourage discussion of new, and even untested, ideas which will likely have some practical interest. Research into all areas of Lisp development, performance monitoring, and language design would be welcome. Lengthy research monographs would not be appropriate for submission here, but selected parts are most welcome, keeping in mind the page limitation; this would include descriptions of partial results which are in the process of being developed for eventual use elsewhere (such as in books, theses, journals and so on). Especially welcome would be tutorial-like coverages of current topics, and coherent sum aries of topics that have been actively discussed on the various electronic mailing lists. Putative solutions to problems brought up in these other forums are also quite welcome, bearing in mind the requirements mentioned below.

All submissions will acknowledged by the Technical Articles Editor, reviewed by him for suitability, style and content, and then published at his discretion. Generally speaking, a well-thought out article will be published. Ask yourself the question "Is this a paper I would be eager to read?" If you are a typical Lisp aficionado, then likely others will want to read it too! [But note: if Lisp Pointers is deluged with more technical contributions than can fit under the publication costs, these policies may have to change.] Replies, corrections, and addenda to previous articles should generally be considered as a Letter to the Editor of the newsletter, rather than as an article in its own right.

The physical layout of submissions should adhere to the policy stated in the editorial policy at the front of this newsletter, with an expected length of five to ten pages (for exceptions to the length restriction, contact the Technical Articles Editor directly). Transmittal may be either the camera-ready hardcopy mailed to the address below, or Tex or LaTex sources electronically mailed through the ArpaNet; sources may also be sent to the address below on a Unix tar format tape, either reel-to-reel or 1/4 inch cartridge.

Cheers, we look forward to hearing from you!

Jon L White
Technical Articles Editor