[r6rs-discuss] comment and vote (if allowed)

From: Keith Wright <r6rsguy>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:24:14 -0400

> From: Elf <elf at ephemeral.net>
>
> I was unable to register for the voting process due to a
> set of computer failures on my end. I realise that this
> vote is invalid, but I wanted to bring up a few things.

I did not register because I do not feel qualified to vote.
In any case, I am not sure I care all that much what the
Report says, so long as it says something. If I want to
write a program I will write it to be evaluated by whatever
implementation is available. If I want to implement a
Scheme compiler/interpreter it will be because I want to try
a new idea which won't be in the Report (because its a new
idea) and so I will ignore the Report. I do not expect the
police to stop me.

Nevertheless, I have already made a few comments on this
list, because I do want to understand the Report, and I do
want the Report to actually say what the editors want it to
say (i.e. to be free of typos and thinkos).

> Scheme is a beautiful language, and books like SICP can
> help them appreciate that... but with R6RS, many of the
> exercises will no longer work.

Do you have a specific example of this? If true, it would
be a very serious problem, but as I recall, SICP does not
make use of much beyond the base language. I think the part
of Scheme that occurs in SICP has not changed much. In
particular, SICP does not use macros, so the addition of
macros (which, by the way, have been there in some form for
at least the last three Revisions of the Report), or changes
to the way macros work, can not break anything in SICP.
(Am I wrong?)

> (define-record-type foo (make-foo a) foo?
> (a foo-a foo-a-set!))

R6RS (if I may now call it that) contains a definition of
the identifier define-record-type, but this seems to be a
syntax violation if interpretted as specified there. I am
not aware of any previous revision of the report that
includes any definition at all for this identifier.

I am unable to parse your program, and therefore
unable to decide if I agree with your criticism.

> which is incredibly useful for, say, using records as structs in an ffi,

No Report has any ffi.

> The removal of "load" and of almost all REPL functionality
> is even more absurd.

I do not think there is anything in R6RS that forbids an implementor
from putting in a "load" procedure and a REPL, if that makes sense
in the context of the implementation and its goals. Previous Reports
did mention "load" but it was never quite clear exactly what it did.
Previous Reports did not mention a REPL at all. If anything, R6RS
does a better job than previous reports in specififying the semantics
of the top level. (IMSO)

It seems to me that you have a favorite implementation, and believe
that more of you favorite implementation is in the previous Report
than actually is there.

   -- Keith
Received on Tue Aug 21 2007 - 01:24:14 UTC