>>> CL-X defaults to point.
>>
>> And, my intention is to operate on the return value of syntax-ppss, not
>> give a point to call it with.
>
> Right, but whenever I want to call on these functions, 90% of the time
> the question I'm trying to answer is "Is point in a comment/string?" And
> the 3rd party ***-is-comment/string-p functions I've looked at usually
> (always?) look at positions.

Well, for me I just want to stop having to look up the docstring of
parse-partial-sexp every damn time I see (nth X PPSS).  But I wouldn't
be against having syntax-is-comment/string-p which take a position as
well.