On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 4:59 PM, John Cowan <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sam TH scripsit:
>
>> Scribble would be vastly less useful if it wasn't used via `read'.
>
> The purpose of "read" is to read S-expressions in the Scheme language.
> Why can't mixed Scheme and Scribble be read through an implementation-specific
> (or even SRFI-based) "read-scheme-and-scribble" procedure?
>
>> It would seem like a mistake to apply arbitrary restrictions to a
>> useful feature, especially since small Scheme is supposed to be
>> compatible with large Scheme, were this problem will presumably have
>> to be tackled.

Because then all of the tools we have for handling s-expression source
files break on code written in Scribble syntax.  Scribble is a lexical
syntax for s-expressions, not a form of data different from
s-expressions.

> So it will, but compatibility means source-code compatibility only.
> It does not mean that everything in large Scheme has to be accomplished
> by writing code in small Scheme, any more than the R6RS libraries can
> be rewritten as Scheme code using the base library.

It would be silly to have different reader extension mechanisms,
merely to apply arbitrary restrictions to the smaller language.

-- 
sam th
[email protected]

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