Re: [Scheme-reports] Formal comment: Adoption of R6RS

[Alex Shinn <alexshinn@x>]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 3:00 AM, Michael Sperber
<sperber@x> wrote:
>
> Formal Comment
>
> the submitter's name: Michael Sperber
> The submitter's email address: sperber@x
> 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.

Formal comment ticket #456 added.

This was intended to be somewhat vague and as mild
as possible - I didn't want to get into the can of worms of
listing any specific complaints against R6RS (although
you can get an idea of what the WG disagreed with in the
list of differences in the appendix).

Yes, any standard is controversial.  The comment about
adoption is based on:

http://lists.r6rs.org/pipermail/r6rs-discuss/2007-October/003351.html

(which we'll add a reference to), where many implementors
expressed no intention of ever supporting R6RS.

Since the decision was up to the SC we will coordinate
with them to see if they'd like to change this note.

-- 
Alex

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