[R6RS] my notes on today's conference call (15 feb 2006)

[William D Clinger]

Conference call 12:48pm 15 Feb 2006.
Kent, Mike, Will, Anton, Matthew

0. finalize agenda (1 minute)
done

1. action items from 1/9/2006 (5 minutes)
   - contacting the steering committee (Kent)
        Mitch wants to release to community on 1 March
   - setting up subversion (Mike)
        has been set up, Kent has tested it
   - setting up mailing lists, bulletin board (Anton)
        working; a few things left to set up
        (automating gateway)
   - drafting status report (Kent)
        we all have the first draft
        next draft should be ready by this time next week

2. status report discussion (10 minutes)
   - general comments
   - question: should we include principles section?
        some more enthusiastic than others
   - question: how much should we say about process?
        what shall we say?  for whom?
        what is our process?  still under discussion
        how and when do we make our process more public?
   - are there other things we still want to vote upon

3. brief status reports (10-20 minutes)
   - exceptions (Sperber)
        SRFI-34 with-exception-handler, guard
            continuation of exception handler unspecified
        SRFI-35 conditions
            to enable communication between separately
                written parts of a program
            can combine several reasons within a single
                condition
            deals only with exceptional conditions in
                the environment, not with program bugs
            safe/unsafe mode
                what conditions do primitives raise
   - I/O (Sperber)
        bytevector i/o
        SRFI-66 octet vectors (compatible with SRFI-4)
        SRFI-74 octet-addressed binary blocks
        SRFI-68 comprehensive i/o
            split into separate layers
        SRFI-81 port i/o (was part of SRFI-68)
            also specifies string ports, conditions
        SRFI-79 suitable as implementation substrate
   - macros (Dybvig)
        no change since Utah meeting
        more precise spec needed (Gasbichler's thesis?)
        Andre van Tonder's stuff?
            Matthew has reservations, will write up
            Gasbichler likes Andre's semantics
   - hash tables (Anton)
     - vote to include or exclude from r6rs
        Anton, Will, Matthew in favor
        Mike has nothing against hash tables but is worried
            about deadline
        Kent wants support for eq? hash tables because
            they can't be implemented efficiently by users
        Will can assist with reformulation of hash tables

4. dicussion of our "guiding principles" (15 minutes)
        specify user-level syntax as well as primitive layer
   - possible vote for adoption

meet next week same time, work on requirements, principles

5. adjourn
about 1:45pm