[plt-scheme] Re: Is R6RS useless for PLT?

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 09:15:39AM +0100, Tom Gordon wrote:
> 
> PLT is, it seems, the leading Scheme system at the moment.  I'm not  
> sure I would go so far as to say it sets the de facto standard,  
> comparable to the way Microsoft set the de facto standard for "office"  
> software, but the situtation is similar, albeit on a much smaller  
> scale.  It is an attractive environment which entices people to use  
> it, but also become dependent on it.  We now have a suitable standard  
> to help regain portability and implementation independence, R6RS, but  
> we still need something like Open Office, a strong competitor to PLT  
> which fully and wholeheartedly supports R6RS.   If such a competitor  
> began to attract users away from PLT, the PLT team might have more of  
> an incentive to make a larger commitment to  R6RS, just as Microsoft  
> in the end has begun to support the ISO Open Document Format.

The easiest way to implement such a competitor would seem to be to take 
PLT Scheme and remove a lot of its code.  The result might possibly fit 
on smaller machines, giving it a market niche.  It might require little 
more than a different Make target in the existing code.

>
> Some really good R6RS compilers and interpreters are now available,  
> which are competitive with PLT, but they still lack PLT's rich  
> programming environment and a comparably rich set of libraries.
> 
> -Tom
> 
> 
> 
> 
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