William D Clinger <will_at_ccs.neu.edu> writes:
> I am posting this as an individual member of the Scheme
> community. I am not speaking for the R6RS editors, and
> this message should not be confused with the editors'
> eventual formal response.
Me too, of course.
> Andre van Tonder asked:
> - What about non-scripts, which are perhaps the majority of Scheme programs?
>
> Non-scripts are definitely the majority of *Scheme*
> programs,
Of course they are, as scripts weren't part of an earlier standard, so
nobody could write portable scripts. I conjecture that most existing
portable Scheme code really corresponds to what's a library in the
current draft, i.e. a piece of code that, when run, has no effects
that are directly observable (or effects that aren't supposed to be
observed), and defines one or several procedures that need to be
called in order to achieve the purpose of the code. (That's an
awkward and probably formally incorrect way to put it, but I hope you
get my drift.) Consequently, while I agree with many aspects of the
original formal comment, this particular argument doesn't cut much ice
with me.
I'm actually sympathetic to wishes to resurrect something like the
R5RS toplevel, but, having used many different Scheme implementations
(and trying to teach with some of them), I can't say that the R5RS
specification did enough to actually give the casual user or novice to
really get started.
> We can only speculate.
My personal speculation is that some of the R6RS editor a) didn't
think the R5RS toplevel was useful enough to stand as it was and b)
lacked the time to come up with something better, at which point
dropping it seemed the preferable alternative. Just speculating, of
course.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, V?lkerverst?ndigung und ?berhaupt blabla
Received on Tue Oct 31 2006 - 10:10:51 UTC