[Scheme-reports] Comments on revised WG1 charter

[Brian Harvey <bh@x>]

In the section "Requirements and Goals," the sentence

	A semantics compatible with interactive read/eval/print loops should
	be provided.

should, I believe, be replaced with

	The semantics of the language must be compatible with interactive
	read/eval/print loops.

To expand on that:  I believe that the WG1 language should have only one
semantics.  It should be mode-free, for the same reason that text editors
and all other interactive programs should be mode-free.

In my opinion, this rules out any structure that requires the user to keep
track of ideas such as "compile time,"  In WG1 Scheme, as in all traditional
Schemes, no matter what happens under the hood, for the user there is only
one "time,"

----------

I don't know whether this was carefully thought out by the SC or just an
accident, but I'm disturbed by the fact that the discussion of compatibility
with R5RS and other traditional Schemes under "Requirements and Goals" uses
"should," whereas the discussion of compatibility with WG2 (\approx R6RS)
under "Coordination with WG2" uses "must."  In my opinion this gets the
importance of the two goals backwards, and also presupposes that this goal
is compatible with the others, which some of us don't believe.  I would
prefer to see "should" language in this section also.  ("Should if possible"
would be even better!)

----------

Under "Membership," does "should endorse the goals of the working group"
mean that agreeing with the "must" about WG2 compatibility is a requirement
for membership?  If not, what /does/ it mean?  And if so, I think this is
a recipe for leaving the people who ended up feeling disenfranchised by R6
still feeling disenfranchised by R7.

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