Scheme Reports

Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear nec- essary. Scheme demonstrates that a very small number of rules for forming expressions, with no restrictions on how they are composed, suffice to form a practical and efficient programming language that is flexible enough to support most of the major programming paradigms in use today. — RⁿRS reports

Scheme was first documented in 1975. Since then, a series of reports on the evolving language have been published. Eventually, the convention RⁿRS began to be used to refer to reports in the sequence.

The most recent report is for R⁷RS (small), which was completed by Working Group 1 in 2013. The R⁷RS (small) language specification (PDF) was approved in 2013-05 and endorsed by the Scheme Language Steering Committee later that year. An unofficial list of R⁷RS (small) errata is being collected.

Working Group 2 is now working on R⁷RS (large).

Scheme Steering Committee

The Scheme Steering Committee was formed in 2004, and has overseen the working groups for R⁶RS (2007) and R⁷RS (2013 and ongoing).

The original Steering Committee, which oversaw R⁶RS, had these members:

• Alan Bawden
• Guy L. Steele
• Mitchell Wand

The second Steering Committee, elected in 2009, oversaw R⁷RS (small):

• William D Clinger
• Marc Feeley
• Chris Hanson
• Jonathan A Rees
• Olin Shivers

The third and current Steering Committee, elected in 2026, is overseeing R⁷RS (large):

• Marc Feeley
• Arthur A. Gleckler
• Shiro Kawai

Working Groups

• Working Group 1 worked on R⁷RS (small), which it completed in 2013.
• Working Group 2 is working on R⁷RS (large).

Public Mailing List

• scheme-reports (at) scheme-reports.org: See Mailing List and Archive.

Public Review Process (Working Group 1)

• Public review process for the sixth draft of the R7RS "small" language (PDF)
• Call for public comment on the sixth draft
• Public vote on whether the ninth draft of the R7RS "small" language (PDF) and other work products satisfy the requirements of the WG1 charter
• Extension of voting period through 2013-05-20
• The ninth draft of the R7RS was approved by 85.7% of the votes. (If the two conditional votes were counted as yes, the percentage would rise to 88.9%.) WG1 was asked to prepare one more draft, which was endorsed by the Scheme Language Steering Committee in early 2013-11.

Steering Committee Working Documents

• New Steering Committee's announcement 2009-08-20
• Scheme standardization process charter (approved 2009-11-16)
  • earlier draft: 2009-08-20
• Position statement on Scheme language evolution 2009-08-20
• Draft meta-charter (explanation of WG chartering process) 2009-08-20
• Charter for Working Group 1 (approved 2010-02-01)
  • earlier draft: 2009-10-21
  • earlier draft: 2009-09-16
• Charter for Working Group 2 (approved 2010-03-03)
  • earlier draft: 2009-10-21
  • earlier draft: 2009-09-16

Scheme Requests for Implementation (SRFI)

• srfi.schemers.org

Scheme Reports

• Report (PDF)
• Revised Report (PDF)
• Revised² Report (PDF)
• Revised³ Report (PDF)
• Revised⁴ Report (PDF)
• Revised⁵ Report (PDF)
• Revised⁶ Report
• Revised⁷ Report, "small" language
  • report (PDF)
  • Errata

Code of Conduct

• Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct