In R7RS, (srfi 1) and (srfi |1|) are different library names.
What is the practical harm?
(If there is some obscure point whereby the semantics don't add up in an
intuitive way, I would genuinely like to hear about it. In practice, I
think library aliases will be a must-have feature eventually. It implies
multiple library names resolving to the same library will be commonplace
irrespective of what is done about numbers specifically.)
Are the practical implications for Scheme programmers or implementers?
It's the whole library name that is of interest. Any part ought not be
interesting on its own.
Parts of Scheme forms can be interesting even if they do not make sense
as stand-alone identifiers.
What is the practical difference?
Sounds like an esoteric point of spec-writing aesthetics.
Your reply is out of context. We were talking about the creation of
R7RS, which happened more than ten years ago.
OK.
I agree with the last point; a future RnRS can special-case "(srfi N)",
demanding that the library described by it must be the same as the
library "(srfi :N)". The latter would be the default and numbers in
library names otherwise deprecated.
Thanks for the conceding that point.
But isn't this special case more complicated than a general rule?
I don't understand your fundamental motivation.
Numbers would be reserved for versioning.
It's unwise to restrict versions to numbers only. Looking at package
managers, non-numerical version parts always crop up eventually.