Allen,

[Re: Varargs]
> I always liked Brian Wilkerson's proposal:
> http://www.smalltalksystems.com/publications/varargs.pdf

Interesting. Has anyone ever implemented this proposal?!

[Re: ANSI process]
> The ANSI discussions were in the context of adding {} as a
> new feature as none to the commercial Smalltalk implementations
> supported it.

Ah, that's slightly different from what I thought - I wasn't aware that no
commercial ST has anything equivalent to {} (but then, I don't know all of
them ;-)

> One of the considerations was that once you add a feature
> you have to assume that it will never go away.  The ANSI
> committee options were essentially 1) add a feature ( {}'s)
> that might encourage poor coding practice, 2) add an
> untested feature (var args) to the stardard, 3) add nothing.
> As you would probably expect, the committee chose alternative #3.
> A standards committee is not (appropriately so) a very good
> place to try to innovate.

Yes, I can see that reasoning.

Cheers,
  -  Andreas