Re: [Scheme-reports] "module" vs. "library"

[John Cowan <cowan@x>]

Denis Washington scripsit:

> What about "define-library"? It might be slightly confusing as it
> sounds a bit procedural for a purely syntactic construct, but it
> does not seem to clash with any existing implementation (as far as a
> quick Google search reveals, at least) and preserves the "library"
> term, which is common, well-known, clear and in line with previous
> Scheme specs (R6RS and, in a way, R5RS' usage of the term "library
> procedure").

That's an excellent idea.  Ticket #228 filed.

> Having said that, I don't find "extensibility" to be a particularly 
> good argument for the design of a standard module system.           

I think it's more about extensibility to the WG2 language and to further
versions of Scheme than extensibility to individual implementation
features (though implementation features ought to be the source for
next-version features).

> [...] what is actually mainly thought of as a portability construct [...]

What begins as a portability construct in the current generation of
Schemes becomes the native format in future generations, if history is
anything to go by -- and not just Scheme history, either; Unicode started
out as a mere interchange encoding between systems that were expected to
preserve their native encodings, and has now become the native encoding
of most systems.

> [...] it encourages programmers to narrow the portability of their
> code to a subset of the Scheme landscape for mere convenience.

As I've pointed out before, application programmers don't really need to
make their code portable between Schemes any more, because each Scheme
(with a very few exceptions) is itself highly portable.  It's library
programmers that really need and benefit from standardization.

-- 
John Cowan              cowan@x          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Any day you get all five woodpeckers is a good day.  --Elliotte Rusty Harold

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