Re: De Facto Standards -- Revised straw proposal for heuristic info

[William D Clinger <will@ccs.neu.edu>]

>  ...I should know
> by now that attempts to use sarcasm in electronic mail invariably misfire
> somehow.

Yes, my joke about binding "substandard" material together with
the R5RS misfired also.

> Actually I was trying to
> continue to raise the alarm about the apparent transfer of effective
> control of the Scheme standard from a diverse group of users, academics and
> implementors, to a small group consisting of a few large implementors.

The Scheme standard remains under the control of the IEEE working
group, which will have to be reconstituted within a year or two in
order to revise the standard before it expires in 2000.  The IEEE
process has safeguards to ensure a balance of influence between
users, academics, and implementors.

Most of the concern that has been expressed about the Scheme
Implementors' Workshop has been expressed in rrrs-authors, which
is a small, exclusive, and unrepresentative group.

In comp.lang.scheme, which is considerably more diverse than
rrrs-authors, there have been many messages to the effect that
implementors need to get off their duffs and do something about

  *  standard interface(s) to other languages, primarily C and C++
  *  standard interfaces to several of the most
       popular OS and GUI libraries
  *  standard libraries
  *  debugging
  *  standalone applications
  *  performance
  *  memory requirements

Apart from the standard libraries' need for some kind of module
facility and for some way to generate new disjoint types, these
issues have little to do with the language standard.

I believe most users would be happy to learn that implementors are
talking to each other in an effort to improve the portability and
usefulness of Scheme.  In fact, I think most users would be appalled
by the opposition to this that some R*RS authors have expressed.

Will