Arthur's sick, so he's not up to posting the new draft I sent him earlier today. However, it's available temporarily at <http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/temp/srfi-143.html>. Note that the status paragraph is updated by Arthur or his scripts, so it still claims to be draft #3.
There are many editorial clarifications, and all comments have been taken into account. I decided to go with `fxneg` as negation and not to do anything about standardizing overflow handling. Shifts and bit selections are now limited by fx-width (so with 24-bit fixnums, it's an error to shift more than 24 bits in either direction, or to refer to bit #24).
The main functional changes are removing the integer division operators (use the generic ones from SRFI 141) and reducing the number of bitwise operations drastically. The idea is to keep only those bitwise ops that seem likely cases for a compiler to implement directly.
If anyone thinks that more SRFI 142 ops should be added, or that fixnum-specific equivalents of SRFI 141 should return, then please let me know. Otherwise I probably won't change this SRFI any more and willl concentrate on implementation and on updating SRFI 144, flonums.
--
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion
that optimum or inadequate performance in the trend of competitive
activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity,
but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be
taken into account. --Ecclesiastes 9:11, Orwell/Brown version