Scheme conference report

[Andy Freeman <ANDY@SU-SCORE.ARPA>]

Will the final report on the scheme conference say anything about
macros?  There are substantial issues to be resolved/understood,
especially in scoping and expansion, but can a "least common
denominator" solution be released in the interim?  How about a syntax
for defining top-level macros?  That can be useful even if everything
else is undefined or optional.

Speaking of top-level solutions, why was ",." left out of the
backquote syntax?  (It's like ",@", except that the value of the
following form may be destructively spliced into the result.  ",@", as
you recall, non-destructively splices the value of the following form
into the result.)  If deeper levels of nesting are going to be
optional, the report has to define what happens.

By the way, unless Scheme is going to define a character set, EOF
isn't necessarily a character.  Neither is end-of-line.

Are all symbols interned or not?  (Interning isn't necessary to print
code and be able to read it back in later.)

Still, most of these are minor issues.  What the final report really
needs is a discussion of the decisions.  Some things do not need
explanation (except to historians), like the names lambda and ', but,
for instance, why are true and false self-evaluating?  In many cases
the decision itself is unimportant, but the issues are.

The report would also be improved by explicit mention of controversial
issues.  So there's no decision; the reasons are still important.

-andy

ps - Why is argument evaluation order unspecified?  That was a mistake
in Pascal, but then AND/OR/etc. have a defined order in Scheme.  Then
again, so many standard forms have a right-left defined order that
consistency would suggest that user procedures should also.

Is the closure position an argument?
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