On 19-Feb-2009 Erich Rast wrote:
> 2. Cross-Platform/Cross-Implementation GUI Library. 

Now would be a perfectly good time to suggest that the process be split
into two separate processes: one in charge of the language itself, and
one in charge of libraries. Maybe a revamping the SRFI process to make
it more capable of handling this sort of job would be good. My ideas
would go something like so:

Language Group: Slow moving, doesn't change often, if ever, and only
deals with vastly general features necessary for the language. Every
Scheme implementation would be required to implement this to be called
Scheme.

Libraries Group: Separate process, moves carefully, accepts only
strongly supported, well designed, tested and implemented libararies; if
a Scheme wishes to support some features, they should be implemented
using the standard library interfaces if there is a library which
defines the features; implementations would not be required to implement
the libraries, but there would be different levels of conformance, say
level 0 - 3. 

Level 0: Only basic Scheme Language implemented, no standard libraries.
Level 1: All level 1 libraries implemented.
Level 2: All level 2 libraries implemented.
Level 3: All standard libraries implemented.

Now perhaps both groups could coordinate in situations where some
features are needed to implement a given library, but is not general
enough to be carte blanche required in the language. Then maybe some set
of features could be listed in the language that would be switches to
support different features; such flags would not be required features,
but these features should be supported if available on the system. Maybe
among a set of mutually exclusive features, implementations must
implement one, but may choose not to implement the other. I imagine
something like:

#!(ascii case-sensitive)

at the top of a file.

This is just a lot of process guessing, but I would like to see the core
language remain useful and simple, and get some standardization of
libraries to assist in portability as well, so long as the libraries are
well designed, tested, and de facto standards.

-- 
Aaron W. Hsu <[email protected]> | <http://www.sacrideo.us>
"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to
live at the expense of everybody else." -- Frederic Bastiat
+++++++++++++++ ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) ++++++++++++++

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