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Ticket 456: Formal Comment: Adoption of R6RS

sperber@deinprogramm.de
2012-10-12 06:27:55
WG1 - Core
alexshinn
major
alexshinn
fixed
source
closed
2012-07-05 04:18:41
defect

the submitter's name: Michael Sperber The submitter's email address: sperber at deinprogramm.de the draft version of the report: draft 6 a one-sentence summary of the issue: Adoption of the standard *was* as widespread as had been hoped a full description of the issue:

(I apologize in advance for being obnoxious about it. It does rankle me. I'll shut up after this one.) The "Background" section has this gem:

"The size and goals of the R6RS, however, were controversial, and adoption of the new standard was not as widespread as had been hoped."

While it's hard to remember *any* language standard that was uncontroversial, at least the last part of the sentence is sufficiently vague to be misleading and tendentious. (Adoption was certainly as fast as *I* had hoped, so there.) In fact, adoption of R6RS among *implementors* has been quite widespread:

http://www.r6rs.org/implementations.html

(This list would be the envy of just about any other programming language community, if it weren't about Scheme.)

Given that most of this support was developed shortly after R6RS had been ratified, adoption was significantly faster than with R5RS. If "adoption" is relevant criterion, than it's mystifying why the R7RS committee went back to a version of the standard that fared worse than R6RS in that regard. What is true is that the elected Steering Committee did not like R6RS, and probably felt justified in departing from R6RS by the electorate.

statusnewaccepted
resolutionfixed
statusacceptedclosed