Re: [Scheme-reports] Ratification vote for R7RS-small

[Ray Dillinger <bear@x>]

Sigh.

What I meant was this;

Scheme is the language whose design was driven by the philosophy that 
rather than adding features it is better to remove restrictions which
have made additional features appear necessary.

WG1 accepted a charter which forbade it from doing exactly that. Had
any restrictions been removed from anything, the language produced would 
have admitted programs which are not acceptable WG2 programs having the 
same semantics.

Therefore this effort has not been driven by that philosophy.

To say "not scheme" is to engage in hyperbole, of course.

Let me speak more precisely:  The WG1 charter explicitly forbade the 
removal of restrictions.  Good work has been done within the constraints 
of that charter, but due to that restriction the work necessarily has 
proceeded in a different direction than the initial
design and early standardization efforts.

When I claimed that the essentialist arguments over R6 started for the 
same reasons, I was pointing out that the R6 process also was not driven 
by the philosophy of removing restrictions that made additional features 
appear necessary, and that the essentialist arguments to R6 were also 
largely a reaction to that fact.

I'm sorry now that I said anything; I considered the meaning completely
clear.

Bear



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