kend@data.UUCP (Ken Dickey) (12/12/90)
[I know I am going to get flamed for this as I tend to piss people off in email. Apologies in advance. One of these years I will learn more self control...] ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) writes: >In article <9012101321.aa19682@mc.lcs.mit.edu> chaynes@SUNFISH.CS.INDIANA.EDU (Chris Haynes) writes: > ... > In accordance with IEEE policy, drafts of the standard will no > longer be distributed by MIT and Indiana University. >does this mean that the draft will no longer be available via ftp? >if so, isn't this a giant leap backwards for the scheme community? I think that you should take another look at the people Chris has mentioned and the amount of effort they have invested. On the positive side, some sw companies only allow the use of languages which have a formal standard from a recognized standards body. This standard means that I can now work for such a company and have the possibility of using Scheme. A major goal in doing the standard was not to stifle research. Another was to be a subset of the R^4RS. Both goals have been met as closely as possible. The result is the best langauge standard I have seen [please take a look at several of them!]. There was a long discussion among the Scheme authors as to whether Scheme should be standardized. I am not going to attempt to recontruct that discussion here. Needless to say, an agreement was reached that a standard was better than no standard and that the IEEE process gave the optimal result. The IEEE retains the copyright to the standard. This is one price of that particular process. I believe that having both an IEEE Standard and R^NRS takes the Scheme community a good step forward. We certainly owe a debt to the people Chris mentioned as well as to Chris Haynes himself. -Ken Dickey
ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) (12/13/90)
In article <440@data.UUCP> kend@data.UUCP (Ken Dickey) writes:
[I know I am going to get flamed for this as I tend to piss people
off in email. Apologies in advance. One of these years I will
learn more self control...]
hopefully, i will stay an insensitive clod. your posting didn't
bother me a bit. what you said needed saying.
I think that you should take another look at the people Chris has
mentioned and the amount of effort they have invested.
they have done an enormously good thing.
On the positive side, some sw companies only allow the use of
languages which have a formal standard from a recognized standards
body.
this is a good point.
Needless to say, an agreement was reached that a standard was
better than no standard and that the IEEE process gave the optimal
result. The IEEE retains the copyright to the standard. This is
one price of that particular process.
i agree that a standard is a good thing (although my previous post
didn't sound like that).
i am curious, though, if having the standard approved means that only
paper copies from the ieee are legal, and that ftp copies are no
longer going to be available. _that_ would be a pity, and would, in
my opinion, be a defect in the ieee policy.
We certainly owe a debt to the people Chris mentioned as well as to
Chris Haynes himself.
let me second this.
scheme is a bright spot in the bleak landscape of computer languages.oz@yunexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) (12/13/90)
In article <TED.90Dec12121251@kythera.nmsu.edu> ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) writes: >i am curious, though, if having the standard approved means that only >paper copies from the ieee are legal, and that ftp copies are no >longer going to be available. _that_ would be a pity, and would, in >my opinion, be a defect in the ieee policy. Ted, I too would like to have the final versions of IEEE standards (at least some of them) in the machine readable form, and I wish I can argue for this in the appropriate forum. On the other hand, it appears that IEEE is way ahead of some other stardards bodies, such as CCITT or ISO in this respect just by making the drafts available in machine readable form. I know of people (including myself) who would give anything (well, almost anything :-) to have even a portion, say 1/3 of a CCITT blue book draft of, say X.500 on-line, even for a limited time. Well, I guess this problem too will be lousy-old-days history someday. >scheme is a bright spot in the bleak landscape of computer languages. Um? I thought the quote was "Scheme is a jewel in the muddy landscape of Computer Languages". [and I thought I said that 8-)] oz --- Where the stream runneth smoothest, | Internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca the water is deepest. - John Lyly | UUCP: utzoo/utai!yunexus!oz
mkatz@GARLIC.STANFORD.EDU (Morris Katz) (12/14/90)
Date: 11 Dec 90 22:49:40 GMT From: Ken Dickey <tektronix!percy!data!kend@bloom-beacon.mit.edu> [I know I am going to get flamed for this as I tend to piss people off in email. Apologies in advance. One of these years I will learn more self control...] ... There was a long discussion among the Scheme authors as to whether Scheme should be standardized. I am not going to attempt to recontruct that discussion here. Needless to say, an agreement was reached that a standard was better than no standard and that the IEEE process gave the optimal result. I beg to differ. No agreement was ever reached. A significant fraction of the Scheme community decided that a standard was desirable and went off and made one through the IEEE. There remain many members of the community who believe that this was and is a bad idea. These people have generally stated their views and then chosen not to subvert the standardization process. -------------------- Morry Katz katz@cs.stanford.edu --------------------