Ray Dillinger asked why we are discussing R7 already. There are several reasons to move expeditiously toward a new document. IMO, the most important reason is that the Scheme community was split by the R6RS. Failure to move forward toward standards that address the needs of both camps would institutionalize this split by creating the impression that this process matters only to those who write R6RS-style static programs, and can be ignored by those who continue to program in the language that was most recently described by the R5RS.
Even if this process were relevant only to users of the new language described by the R6RS, we already know of many problems with that language that need to be fixed. Some of those problems were known even when the R6RS was ratified, having been identified in comments that preceded or accompanied the ballot. With a better standards process, those technical comments would have led promptly to new drafts and new ballots, even though the very first ballot had exceeded the nominal 60% threshold for ratification. For this next round of revision, we should strive to achieve the "maximum possible timely consensus", as was accomplished by the five drafts of IEEE-754R that were prepared and put to a vote even after its nominal 75% threshold had been achieved. Furthermore we now have an entire year of experience with substantially complete implementations of the R6RS. With six different implementations of all or most of the R6RS (Larceny, PLT, Ypsilon, Ikarus, IronScheme, Mosh), we have already encountered the most serious portability problems that were created by the R6RS, and implementors and some users of those systems are by now quite familiar with what Aziz accurately described as its "useless procedures, complex interfaces, ill-specified corner cases, buggy code, typos, etc." It's time to fix the many known problems of the R6RS, and it's time for this process to make a more serious attempt to address the concerns of those who perceive the R6RS as a repudiation of the spirit of Scheme. Will _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
