[plt-scheme] Planned changes for PLT Scheme 4.0

Hi,

I try to answer several e-mails at the same time. Sorry for the longish e-mail.

> > But, in poking through the MrEd graphical
> > toolbox manual, which I've had to do on occasion, it always strikes me
> > as the most un-PLT part of the distribution. All that inheritance and
> > overriding!
>
> No, it's the most PLT-ish part. Instead of trying to fit every task
> into a single way of doing things, we try to have the right tool for
> the job.

I fully agree. When you start with MrEd it looks strange compared to other
toolkits. However as you get more involved with it you will start to enjoy it
and do things very easily. The current way provides a lot of flexibility.
My opinion:
I have tried toolkits in several contexts. If I only mention the different
scheme variations then the way of PLT is the best compared to e.g.
guile, Bigloo.

> Most of what GUI libraries provide is now available in Web programming
> frameworks. So:
>
> Why not turn PLT Scheme entirely into a Web service, and the front-end
> entirely into a Web application? In the special case, the service
> runs locally and the front-end communicates with the local back-end.
> In the general case, you can run it across a network (having, for
> instance, a big compute server running lots of jobs).

That is an interesting concept. 
For example there is a cross platform toolkit at
http://www.trixul.com/
using Javascript,  XML, etc. which is almost Web based.
In my view I would not go down that road, but I could be wrong.

Finally, this was a private e-mail, but I hope the sender will not be angry with me
to answer it here.

> > Would you (PLT-Scheme developers) consider updating the GUI part of PLT-Scheme with a 
> > newer wxWindows?
>
>Did you have a particular tool kit in mind?

At the moment the only thing I wanted to switch to newer wxWindows. In my view the internal
parts of the current wxWindows and the one in PLT-Scheme are not so much different (I could
be wrong here) and the main thing to do would be to change bits that are required for
Plt-Scheme. Another reason to choose wxWindows, in my view, that through wxWindows 
several other toolkits can be called.

I also would like to mention, that I have indicated to Matthew that I am willing to try to do 
something with the GUI in PLT-Scheme, so I am open for suggestions, help, etc.
(I am not nominating myself as leader in this, but I would like to do something, so
if somebody has more time I am also willing to join another effort.)
As I understand, as Matthew indicated, we have to fulfill one very important criteria with
the new GUI, that it should be able to run Dr-Scheme almost without a hitch or with a
very simple porting. As I have said above, I prefer the current way, inheritance,
overriding, so I would still follow that, and this is another reason for something like
wxWindows.

Best regards,

Peter Ivanyi
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