> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Alan Watson <[email protected]> wrote: >> A long time ago, some people made the decision that #t/#f were in some sense >> better than #!true/#!false. More recently, the WG1 have made a different >> decision that #true/#false are in some sense better than #t/#f. >> >> This decision is not without cost. If an R7RS Scheme writes a boolean datum >> as #true or #false, it likely cannot be read by a R4RS, R5RS, or R6RS >> Scheme. It is unrealistic and probably undesirable to require perfect >> compatibility between iterations of Scheme, but changing the spelling a >> fundamental data is perhaps unexpected. The WG1 needs to decide if this cost >> is acceptable, and if not either revert their decision to allow #true/#false >> or require write to produce #t/#f. > > Thank you for the feedback. However, before you jump to the conclusion that > we threw this in frivolously, or that the WG members voted without thinking > at all about the consequences, perhaps you could ask for our rationale?
Hang on a second. I didn't say or imply that this was frivolous and I did not say or imply that you did this without thinking about the consequences. I just pointed out a cost and said you needed to consider it. Furthermore, one of my suggestions for mitigating the cost (having write produce #t/#f) explicitly left the new spellings intact. I did look for the rationale, but did not find any discussion of the implications for sharing data between different generations of Scheme. Perhaps I missed it, and if so I apologize for wasting your time. Regards, Alan _______________________________________________ Scheme-reports mailing list [email protected] http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports
