[R6RS] SRFIs for R6RS

[Marc Feeley]

I have presented to the SRFI editors our intention to use the SRFI  
process to help us in the design of R6RS, and have gotten some  
suggestions which I have taken into account.  For the upcoming "R6RS  
SRFI" submissions I ask that the authors add the following paragraphs  
at the top of the status section to clarify the intent of the  
submission.

    This SRFI is being submitted by a member of the Scheme Language
    Editor's Committee as part of the Scheme standardization process.
    The purpose of such ``R6RS SRFIs'' is to inform the Scheme  
community of
    features and design ideas under consideration by the editors and
    to allow the community to give the editors some direct feedback that
    will be considered during the design process.

    At the end of the discussion period, this SRFI will be  
withdrawn.  When the
    R6RS specification is finalized, the SRFI may be revised to  
conform to the R6RS
    specification and then resubmitted with the intent to finalize  
it.  This
    procedure aims to avoid the situation where this SRFI is  
inconsistent with
    R6RS.  An inconsistency between R6RS and this SRFI could confuse  
some users.
    Moreover it could pose implementation problems for R6RS compliant  
Scheme
    systems that aim to support this SRFI.  Note that departures from  
the SRFI
    specification by the Scheme Language Editor's Committee may occur  
due to
    other design constraints, such as design consistency with other  
features
    that are not under discussion as SRFIs.

Moreover, I would like to know how the writing of the following SRFIs  
is coming (i.e. when do you expect to submit these SRFIs):

- Library (Matthew)
- Unicode (Matthew)
- Numerics (Will)
- Syntax-case (Kent)
- Records (Kent)

[note: syntax-case and records have to go through a round of  
discussion before being submitted but we might as well write them up  
as SRFIs to start with.]

I suggest that other editors help out with the writing to accelerate  
the process (in particular the SRFIs that Matthew and Kent are  
working on).  I would like the first SRFI to be submitted in no more  
than a week, and the others in no more than a month.  If we wait any  
longer I fear the discussion will be too short.  We must be done with  
the discussion on the first 3 SRFIs (Library, Unicode, Numerics) by  
September so that we can start adding these topics to the R6RS  
document before the Scheme workshop.

Marc