Re: Scheme acceptance [no flames]

["John R. Hall" <overcode@lokigames.com>]

Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
> John R. Hall wrote:
> > Wouldn't "The MzSchemer's Cookbook" be more appropriate? Otherwise
> > people will expect it to work with Guile.
> > (the other option would be to avoid MzScheme-specific constructs, which
> > would be silly - MzScheme has some really nice stuff)

> The notes are very distinctly going to be tied to PLT Scheme.
> Otherwise you couldn't do anything cookbook-ish in Scheme, and the
> notes would be useless.

Good decision, but shouldn't the title reflect that? Scheme started
making more sense once I realized that I was not programming in Scheme,
but rather MzScheme. 

> Of course, we publish our interfaces, so it's not like Guile or others
> couldn't implement the same interfaces.  That's their call.

And I doubt it'll happen. They hadn't even found time to write
documentation, last time I checked.

> > A random, unrelated thought: MzScheme is not included with most Linux
> > distributions (I think it's an optional package on one of the SuSE CD's,
> > but that's about it). There is no reason for this - there are perfectly
> > good RPM's, MzScheme is quite stable, and it is one of the best free
> > Scheme implementations out there.
> >                                   Perhaps PLT could email the
> > packagers-that-be at several of the major Linux distros?

> We've tried, and finally grown tired of wasting our time esp with
> unresponsive people like RedHat.

They're busy... One might try setting up a cron job to email them on a
weekly basis :)
I think Red Hat would be the most important distro to get DrScheme
included with.
Politely nagging them is probably the only way to make it happen.

> > I'd be happy to contribute Slackware packages for MzScheme.
> Would you be willing to *maintain* it?  That is, every time a new PLT
> release is about to come out (we would inform you in advance), you
> update your disk copy via CVS and create the package in time so it
> will be on the Web along with our other distributions when we are
> ready to announce the release?
> If yes, that would be really TERRIFIC.  And volunteers for other
> distributions would be equally welcome!

Sure. Slackware packages are extremely easy to put together. I'll try to
package the current version, and if there are no problems I wouldn't
mind maintaining it.

-John