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From: lord@x1.cygnus.com (Tom Lord)
Subject: Re: GNU Extension Language Plans
In-Reply-To: rockwell@nova.umd.edu's message of 24 Oct 1994 22:56:33 -0400
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    Raul D. Miller asks:


	Which leads me to wonder about how to contribute to the current
	effort.  What is considered to be a contribution?  Are these sorts of
	implementation design issues still being considered?

	I'm interested in the effort, but not sure how I would fit in with the
	existing effort.  I'm not even sure how to ask about the existing
	effort.

	Where do things stand?


Here are some answers: 


* How can I contribute to the project?

  To volunteer your time either for hacking or writing, you can write
  to lord@gnu.ai.mit.edu.  A very promising list of volunteers is
  already forming.  I think there is a chance the project can go quite
  quickly if this keeps up.



* Where do things stand now?

  I am currently putting together a task list.  During the week of
  31-Oct-94 I'll be sending the task list to all the volunteers and
  organizing the initial division of labor.

  The first hacking step of the project, which must precede all
  others, will be to rename some of the identifiers in the SCM source,
  to combine the SCM and SCM autoconf distributions, and to make some
  slight amendments to the Makefile.

  The most immediate goal of this is to make a standard GNU
  distribution of SCM that compiles to a namespace-friendly library.
  Included with this distribution will be a header file of CPP defines
  for the old identifier names; its purpose will be to enable existing
  SCM extensions to continue to work.



* Can we convince you to change the design?

  Compelling, pragmaticly oriented arguments may be convincing.  They
  should probably be made to lord@gnu.ai.mit.edu rather than carried
  on endlessly in netnews.  

  For practical reasons, we won't be engaging in prolonged debate on
  any point.  Informed critiques are very welcome, but please don't
  count on an engaging reply; there isn't enough time to reply to
  every critique that comes in.

  Perhaps the best way to influence the design is with code.  If you
  don't like the way we plan to implement some feature, and you can
  provide that feature in a better way, you'll find that we have
  trouble arguing against code that works.  If your way really is
  better, we'll gratefully accept the code, and voila -- the design is
  changed.  (But before going off the deep end, it is probably a good
  idea to understand all the reasons the design is as it is; if you
  accidently ignore some of our requirements, your code may not be
  useful to the project.)


  

* Where can I ask about the project?

  You can send inquiries to lord@gnu.ai.mit.edu, but please understand
  that not all inquiries receive immediate or even eventual replies.
  There is simply not enough time.

  As new versions of the language are released, announcements will be
  posted to at least the newsgroups comp.lang.scheme and
  gnu.misc.discuss, and to the mailing list info-gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.

  Eventually, I hope a volunteer can start a FAQ for the project.



-t

--
----

If you would like to volunteer to help with the GNU extension language
project, please write to lord@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
