On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 2:10 AM Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Bound-identifier=? is what is needed. Free-identifier=? roughly is the COMPARE argument to er-macro-transformer.

Yes, sorry. I had a 50% chance of guessing right.

There's a new draft of SRFI 211 and I plan on getting it finalized soon. Feedback would be very welcome, of course.

I can't comment on the substance because I can barely handle syntax-rules. But a minor point and a major one:

1) The "old-style Lisp" macros should be called "Common Lisp" macros, because Scheme is also a Lisp, and because defmacro/define-macro is not "old style" to Common Lispers and various kinds of Schemers too.

SRFIs normally give a user-directed specification of what these things do, and put the implementation strategy into the non-normative "Implementation" section. This SRFI is almost all implementation strategy.

Although probably futile, I repeat my objection against the voting process, which I don't think produces the best language possible.

Saying "best" leads to the question "Best as decided by whom?" and in turn "Best for whom?"

It has the tendency of producing somewhat arbitrary results due to the fact that not everyone voting is fully informed about all pitfalls in all topics to be voted on,

Inevitably so. You (and I, for that matter) know a great deal about a great deal, but are not *fully* informed in that sense.

because the set of voters is far from being stable across all votings on R7RS-large dockets.

That too I believe to be inevitable in a multi-year project, whether the self-appointed deciders use STV + majority vote or unanimity. R7RS-large is the first standard I know of at this scale that wasn't written by people whose employers paid them to write it, as was the case for Java (844 pages) or CL (1360 pages). We all work on it part-time with a variable amount of our total effort.

Consequently, we can maintain no schedule, and people will come and go: they may lose interest, change to a more demanding job, have to drop out for personal or family reasons, decide to do nothing further for the project because of deep objections to how it's going (Will Clinger's case with R6RS) or just plain die. (I don't expect to see this project through to the end, and I hope that if it is ever finished it will be dedicated to my memory.)

Unanimous consent between those involved would be far better IMO, with one voting over the whole of the R7RS-large after consolidation. Another problem is that SRFIs are usually voted in all-or-nothing, but what's in a SRFI is eventually solely decided by its author.

People who wish to do otherwise need only write their own SRFIs, which can be and often are based on existing SRFIs or other documents.

I will voice my support or objections for or against certain additions to the R7RS-large (if someone wants to listen), but I won't take part in the voting process anymore, using my democratic choice not to vote to document my opinion on the voting itself.

~~ sigh ~~. Since it must be so.