[plt-scheme] Syntax Reader and Macros

> The first problem is that 
> when I use read-syntax to get a syntax object representing the 
> expression, I can find no way to attach it to the correct 
> lexical environment. I get errors on anything I do, since it 
> seems to be attached to an empty lexical environment, with not 
> even #%app, #%datum, or #%top defined. 

That last statement is correct: `read-syntax' produces syntax objects
without context.

> How can I attach an 
> already built syntax object to a particular lexical environment?

If `ctx' is a syntax object containing the context you want, and if
`content' is the read-syntax' result:

  (let loop ([content content])
    (cond
     [(pair? content)
      (cons (loop (car content))
	    (loop (cdr content)))]
     [(null? content) null]
     [else
      (let ([v (syntax-e content)])
	(datum->syntax-object
	 ctx
	 (cond
	  [(pair? v) 
	   (loop v)]
	  [(vector? v)
	   (list->vector (loop (vector->list v)))]
	  [(box? v)
	   (box (loop (unbox v)))]
	  [else
	   v])
	 content
         content))]))

WARNING: The above code doesn't handle cycles in `content'. (Well, I
took the code from the implementation of `include', which means that I
need to fix `include'...)

> Also, when I read characters and expressions from a syntax 
> object converted into a string, I read one character per logical 
> character in the string. In the code, however, a character such 
> as a newline can be represented as a newline directly in the 
> input, \n, \12, \012, \xA, or \x0A. This makes it rather 
> difficult to predict how many characters in the input file 
> correspond to one character in the string, which makes it hard 
> to calculate offsets for highlighting and error reporting in 
> various parts of that string. Is there any way to tell how many 
> characters one character in a string corresponded to originally? 

Not currently.

> Would it be possible to attach some table to string syntax 
> objects that tells you which characters in that string 
> correspond to multiple characters in the source?

That's an interesting suggestion, but I wonder where to stop. For
example, symbols and numbers can have many different concrete
representations, too. At some point, I wonder whether it isn't best to
re-read the source to extract additional, special-purpose information.

Matthew