[r6rs-discuss] Implementors' intentions concerning R6RS

From: Jon Wilson <j85wilson>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:32:51 -0400

Hi Kent,

R. Kent Dybvig wrote:
> While it would be great if every implementation were to adopt R6RS, that
> was never a possibility given the small number that fully adopted R5RS.

Then why bother writing and ratifying R6RS? As I understood things,
there were two goals for R6RS:

  * Fixing a number of minor issues and ill-defined things in R5RS
  * Increasing the cross-implementation portability of Scheme code

Since the standard was such that very few implementors were going to
bother with it, a fact which was known prior to Marc's post, and also
prior to ratification (and apparently even prior to writing, if you are
to be believed here, Kent), then it was known prior to ratification that
the standard had already failed its most important goal! So why was the
standard ratified, given that its failure was already known?

A standard which is largely unimplemented is a useless standard, except
insofar as it is a list of suggested features. However, the Scheme
community already has and had a mechanism for making lists of suggested
features. In fact, Tom Lord once suggested that R6RS should have been
broken up and reborn as a number of SRFIs. The editors were, in my
opinion, very unwise to ignore this.
Regards,
Jon Wilson
Received on Sat Oct 27 2007 - 10:32:51 UTC