Andre van Tonder scripsit: > I prefer William Clinger's philosophy regarding standards, which can > be found somewhere in the R6RS discussions. From memory, a standard > posits a set of postulates that can be used to infer a set of portable > programs. Not all programs allowed by an implementation need to be > portable, but if the set of postulates is simple enough, it should be > relatively easy to program in the portable sublanguage.
That sets a floor, but not a ceiling. How much should be standardized and how much should not remains open. In ANSI C discussions, the formula that a standard is a contract between users and implementers was employed. This too is reasonable, but how many clauses should the contract have? C prescribes that a short is no shorter than a char and no longer than an int. Java prescribes that it is 16 bits. Both styles have merit in their own contexts. > Specifying that an unspecified value be returned by a command is a > prime example of a a postulate that does not need to be added to the > language specification. But it *was* added and remains there. To change it, a majority of a self-selected set (you, too, could have participated, and you and you and you) had to decide to change it. They didn't. -- All Norstrilians knew that humor was John Cowan "pleasurable corrigible malfunction". [email protected] --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrilia _______________________________________________ Scheme-reports mailing list [email protected] http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports
