"Alex Shinn":

>On 4/13/06, Philippe Meunier <xxxxxx@ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> Marc Feeley <xxxxxx@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> >1) I prefer prefix syntax, e.g.   (button :text "OK" :action quit)
>> >2) I prefer suffix syntax, e.g.   (button text: "OK" action: quit)
>> >3) I don't care
>
>2.
>
>As an example of a procedure that looks especially nice with suffix
>syntax, here is SEND-MAIL from the Hato mail server:
>

Okay, this post is a bit lame since the last message in this thread was
posted over a year ago, and I only read it because of the finalization
announcement on comp.lang.scheme. However, I want to express my opinion on
this matter anyway, since a couple of points didn't seem to be mentioned
explicitly in the discussion.

Alex' example with suffix:

   (send-mail From:    "Dr. Watson <xxxxxx@grimpen.moor>"
              To:      "Sherlock Homes <xxxxxx@221B-baker.street>"
              Subject: "First Report"
              Charset: "ISO-8859-1"
              Body:    "Moor is gloomy. Heard strange noise, attached."
              Attachments: '((File: "howl.ogg")))

Alex' example with prefix:

   (send-mail :From    "Dr. Watson <xxxxxx@grimpen.moor>"
              :To      "Sherlock Homes <xxxxxx@221B-baker.street>"
              :Subject "First Report"
              :Charset "ISO-8859-1"
              :Body    "Moor is gloomy. Heard strange noise, attached."
              :Attachments '((File: "howl.ogg")))

I think prefix is better, for the following two reasons:

1. Its faster to spot the colon when its at the start of a word: "Aha!
    the first character is a colon, the characters following the colon
    constructs a keyword."

2. Vertical alignment. "send-mail"'s arguments consists of a bunch of
    keywords+argument pairs, where the first coloumn is keywords and the
    second is arguments. This is easier to spot with prefix because all the
    colons are vertical aligned.

IMHO! :-)