Scheme language standardization process
On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 15:46 -0400, Marc Feeley wrote: > New drafts of the charters proposed for working groups 1 and 2 are now > online at http://www.scheme-reports.org/ . > > Comments on these two draft charters are solicited. If you want your > comments to be seen only by the Scheme Language Steering Committee, > send them to I think first of all that the timelines set forth in the working group charters are too short by at least half. It is not reasonable to think that both consensus and consistency may be achieved in this timeframe, especially since WG1's charter includes a "proof of implementability" which at this time can only be interpreted to mean an implementation. Secondly I suspect that the requirement that the language of WG1 must be a subset of the language of WG2 will cause difficulties more serious than those who drafted the charters now suspect, for reasons I have explained on the R6RS-discuss list. I see the desires of those who want a "small scheme" as being qualitatively different than what can be achieved by subsetting a larger scheme which serves the needs outlined in the WG2 charter. The subset language will not under these rules be permitted to be consistent and unconstrained enough to avoid the need for the additional things required by the full language, thus it really will be "part of a language" instead of "a language so consistent and unconstrained that it can remain small." It would not have been necessary to have more than one working group in the first place if subsetting were a viable approach. Rather, it would be appropriate for the working group to produce a document specifying some constraints as "optional", as was done in past RNRS reports. Indeed, this will be the net effect of the current effort if the draft WG charters are ratified and executed. At any rate, the effort will be interesting. Bear _______________________________________________ Scheme-reports mailing list Scheme-reports@x http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports