Hello Alan, On 23-Feb-2009 Alan Watson wrote: >> we should try to rectify the >> backwards compatibility issues that were introduced in R6RS > > The genie is now out of the bottle. > > If the R7RS reverts to case-insensitivity, it will be breaking > backwards compatibility with the R6RS. So, in order to revert to > case- insensitivity, you have to argue that backwards compatibility > with the R6RS is not worthwhile. But since backwards compatibility > is the most convincing argument for case-insensitivity, you've just > blown your case.
We can rectify this by making every implementation support both in a simple, easy, nice way. This could either be required (for portability) or it could be left as unspecified, and code that wishes to be portable would have to code to the least common denominator (and even that wouldn't work perfectly). But rather than rely on a specific decision at this point. I would rather that the committee make some kind of requirement that backward compatibility be properly considered, and not let go unless for very good reasons with very good rationale. -- 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))) ++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
