Andrew Wilcox wrote:

>My thanks to Tom Lord for his insightful comments and to Tony
>Garnock-Jones for posting the references to the Petname System and
>Zooko's Triangle.
>
>  http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html
>  http://www.zooko.com/distnames.html
>
>It took me a while to read and absorb the material.  Now that I have,
>I find the arguments of Petname system quite compelling and a great
>improvement over my current proposal.
>
Interesting ideas. Definitely worth exploring.

However, the problem with scheme modules is that a standard one does not
exist at all.

Can't we just get some sort of simple working module system in place and
leave the notion of secure bindings to version 2?

Look at Java. It has a simple library system that doesn't obsess with
library authentication and people can use it to distribute code.

Why can't scheme have something simple that just works?

Just get it out the door. Complicating things unnecessarily will prevent
something usable (again).

Regarding petnames in particular, if "raw" (and unreadable) keys have to
be in source code then things won't work, unless that becomes simply the
distribution form only. So one can imagine that conversion tools can be
made to convert to the more readable pet names.

But if that is just name conversion, then why can't the sources be
distributed with the author's exact version (much more robust!), and an
extra library "digest" be added to provide the binding from "author"
names to library keys to the local user's petname? That way, source code
is always directly readable.

Cheers,
Ray Blaak