From: Mitchell Wand
Subject: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <1158263178.510926.263140@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
I am extremely pleased to announce that a draft version of R6RS is now
available at www.r6rs.org .  A copy will also be posted on
schemers.org .

The charter provides for a six-month public comment period.  Therefore
the editors, in consultation with the steering committee, have
provided a mechanism for comment and discussion.  Details are also at
www.r6rs.org .

The comment period is now open and will continue until March 15, 2007.

The steering committee thanks the editors for their intensive work on
the draft R6RS, and looks forward to the public comment period.

Enjoy!

For the Steering Committee,
--Mitch Wand

From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <7ZkOg.185$h87.3@newsfe12.lga>
Mitchell Wand wrote:
> I am extremely pleased to announce that a draft version of R6RS is now
> available at www.r6rs.org .  A copy will also be posted on
> schemers.org .

Gee, one hundred forty-two pages, up from five. Got my hopes up for the 
language. Lessee...

> Programming languages should be designed not by piling
> feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses
> and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary.
> Scheme demonstrates that a very small number of
> rules for forming expressions, with no restrictions on how
> they are composed, suffice to form a practical and efficient
> programming language that is flexible enough to support
> most of the major programming paradigms in use today.

Oh, well.

:)

ken

-- 
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/

"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
    -- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <YdydnbHJYrNYqJfYnZ2dnUVZ_vKdnZ2d@speakeasy.net>
Ken Tilton  <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| Mitchell Wand wrote:
| > I am extremely pleased to announce that a draft version of R6RS is now
| > available at www.r6rs.org .  A copy will also be posted on
| > schemers.org .
| 
| Gee, one hundred forty-two pages, up from five.
| Got my hopes up for the language. ...
+---------------

I can see how one might easily typo "50" as "5", but it's
more curious when it's a "word-o" from "fifty" to "five".  ;-}  ;-}
Yes, the PDF version of R5RS was 50 pages:

    http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/r5rs.pdf

versus, as Kenny observed, 142:

    http://www.r6rs.org/r6rs_91.pdf

Still, the basic point stands: from 50 to 142 pages
in only one "revision" is... disturbing. (*sigh*)


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <KJrOg.357$%W2.35@newsfe10.lga>
Rob Warnock wrote:
> Ken Tilton  <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> +---------------
> | Mitchell Wand wrote:
> | > I am extremely pleased to announce that a draft version of R6RS is now
> | > available at www.r6rs.org .  A copy will also be posted on
> | > schemers.org .
> | 
> | Gee, one hundred forty-two pages, up from five.
> | Got my hopes up for the language. ...
> +---------------
> 
> I can see how one might easily typo "50" as "5",....

Not if one knows enough grammar never to use numerals for numbers in 
formal writing.

>... but it's
> more curious when it's a "word-o" from "fifty" to "five".  ;-}  ;-}
> Yes, the PDF version of R5RS was 50 pages:

50!? What a pig!

> 
>     http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/r5rs.pdf
> 
> versus, as Kenny observed, 142:
> 
>     http://www.r6rs.org/r6rs_91.pdf
> 
> Still, the basic point stands: from 50 to 142 pages
> in only one "revision" is... disturbing. (*sigh*)

Yep. They go from a factor of twenty-six to a factor of like nine. That 
is a loss of seventeen, and projected out over the next revision we get 
a Scheme spec eight times bigger than CL's, or ten thousand four hundred 
pages. Ha!

kt

-- 
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/

"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
    -- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
From: Stefan Mandl
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <4mv4j4F7v7qsU1@news.dfncis.de>
Rob Warnock wrote:

> Still, the basic point stands: from 50 to 142 pages
> in only one "revision" is... disturbing. (*sigh*)
> 

I had the same thought, but when looking closer, found that
the language is still only around 50 pages, the rest
is on libraries they are going to standardize, I guess mostly
by providing implementations.

So the Scheme folks have found a way to stay up to date ... what about CL?

regards,
Stefan
From: Marcus Breiing
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <eedo54$3pd$1@chessie.cirr.com>
Stefan Mandl <············@informatik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:

> I had the same thought, but when looking closer, found that
> the language is still only around 50 pages, the rest
> is on libraries they are going to standardize

Yet, on first glance, much of it seems to specifiy things you
*couldn't* replicate exactly by writing code in 50-Page-Scheme. That
makes claims that it's "just" libraries on top of 50-Page-Scheme
somewhat bogus, IMHO.

-- 
Marcus Breiing
(Cologne, Germany)
From: Stefan Mandl
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <4mv817F820l6U1@news.dfncis.de>
Marcus Breiing wrote:
> Stefan Mandl <············@informatik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:
> 
>> I had the same thought, but when looking closer, found that
>> the language is still only around 50 pages, the rest
>> is on libraries they are going to standardize
> 
> Yet, on first glance, much of it seems to specifiy things you
> *couldn't* replicate exactly by writing code in 50-Page-Scheme. That
> makes claims that it's "just" libraries on top of 50-Page-Scheme
> somewhat bogus, IMHO.
> 

Really? My impression was that most of the stuff is "on-top" as
there is that page with reference implementations: http://www.r6rs.org/refimpl/

And there is no low-level thing like Threads, hmm this Byte-Stuff probably is.
You may be right ;)

Still the more interesting thing from a CL point of view seems to be that the
language evolves, though we'll have to see if implementations follow.

regards,
Stefan
From: Marcus Breiing
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <eedtj6$4df$1@chessie.cirr.com>
Stefan Mandl <············@informatik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:

> And there is no low-level thing like Threads, hmm this Byte-Stuff
> probably is. You may be right ;)

My main exhibit would probably be records. Records introduce new
disjoint types, which -I think- you can't do yourself in plain Scheme.
I'd guess most people would classify that as a language feature.

> Still the more interesting thing from a CL point of view seems to be
> that the language evolves

So does CL - just pick an implementation:-)

-- 
Marcus Breiing
(Cologne, Germany)
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <4n3acgF8g2ghU1@individual.net>
Stefan Mandl wrote:
> Marcus Breiing wrote:
>> Stefan Mandl <············@informatik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:
>>
>>> I had the same thought, but when looking closer, found that
>>> the language is still only around 50 pages, the rest
>>> is on libraries they are going to standardize
>>
>> Yet, on first glance, much of it seems to specifiy things you
>> *couldn't* replicate exactly by writing code in 50-Page-Scheme. That
>> makes claims that it's "just" libraries on top of 50-Page-Scheme
>> somewhat bogus, IMHO.
>>
> 
> Really? My impression was that most of the stuff is "on-top" as
> there is that page with reference implementations: 
> http://www.r6rs.org/refimpl/
> 
> And there is no low-level thing like Threads, hmm this Byte-Stuff 
> probably is.
> You may be right ;)

Common Lisp also has a core part, with the rest being added on top. It's 
not so clear from the specification, but see ISLISP for a Lisp dialect 
that can be regarded as a subset of Common Lisp. If the size of the 
specification matters to you: ISLISP has 132 pages - that would be 
smaller than Scheme by now. ;)

What R6RS proves is that the notion of a minimal language from which you 
can build everything else doesn't work, independent from the question 
whether parts of a language specification are "just" libraries or not.

> Still the more interesting thing from a CL point of view seems to be 
> that the language evolves, though we'll have to see if implementations follow.

More interesting for who? R6RS is an evolution of a language 
specification. There are other dimensions along which a language (and 
its community) can evolve.

Don't forget that language stability can also be valuable in its own 
right. R6RS has the danger that either lots of Scheme code has to be 
rewritten or even be redesigned, without adding observable advantages in 
the applications themselves, and/or that some Scheme implementations 
will be left behind and the community gets fragmented. (Note that there 
are still Scheme implementations that aren't even fully R5RS compliant.)

BTW, this all happened before. The Common Lisp standardization 
(apparently) has led to the fragmentation of the Lisp community into 
Common Lisp, Scheme, Dylan, EuLisp and ISLISP (at least), the latter of 
which were all explicitly created as attempts to be "better" Common 
Lisps (or "Uncommon Lisps"), at least partially.

I don't claim that this _will_ happen again, but I claim that it's far 
too early to declare victory.


Pascal

-- 
My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: Ari Johnson
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <m27j052fn2.fsf@hermes.theari.com>
Marcus Breiing <······@2006w36.mail.breiing.com> writes:

> Stefan Mandl <············@informatik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:
>
>> I had the same thought, but when looking closer, found that
>> the language is still only around 50 pages, the rest
>> is on libraries they are going to standardize
>
> Yet, on first glance, much of it seems to specifiy things you
> *couldn't* replicate exactly by writing code in 50-Page-Scheme. That
> makes claims that it's "just" libraries on top of 50-Page-Scheme
> somewhat bogus, IMHO.

Are these supposed libraries optional for implementations?  If so,
then they're not worth as much as they would be if they were mandatory
because you have to find an implementation that offers them, anyhow,
and an implementation might still offer an incompatible implementation
of the same features as the standard requires and just say that they
don't implement that standard library, but you can use their
proprietary version instead.  This is no different from, for instance,
sockets in CL.

If the libraries are mandatory, then I cannot distinguish them from
the core language in any meaningful way.  You could chop up the CL
standard into dozens of pieces and call them all "libraries," but they
are all mandatory in the language specification anyhow so there is no
difference.

In sum: If the libraries are optional, they are worthless, and if they
are mandatory, then their pages in the specification count toward its
total.
From: Josip Gracin
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <eedl2u$gvm$1@sunce.iskon.hr>
Ken Tilton wrote:
> Mitchell Wand wrote:
>> I am extremely pleased to announce that a draft version of R6RS is now
>> available at www.r6rs.org .  A copy will also be posted on
>> schemers.org .
> 
> Gee, one hundred forty-two pages, up from five. Got my hopes up for the 
> language. Lessee...

It's gonna be tough creating an index that big.
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: R6RS Draft Available
Date: 
Message-ID: <rWzOg.3508$h87.3429@newsfe12.lga>
Josip Gracin wrote:
> Ken Tilton wrote:
> 
>> Mitchell Wand wrote:
>>
>>> I am extremely pleased to announce that a draft version of R6RS is now
>>> available at www.r6rs.org .  A copy will also be posted on
>>> schemers.org .
>>
>>
>> Gee, one hundred forty-two pages, up from five. Got my hopes up for 
>> the language. Lessee...
> 
> 
> It's gonna be tough creating an index that big.

ROFL.

kt

-- 
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/

"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
    -- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon