Re: Scheme acceptance [no flames]

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk@cs.brown.edu>]

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.

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

> 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. 

We couldn't agree with you more.  That too when Linux's come with
barely-maintained Scheme's like UMB Scheme.  Worse, when someone
experiments with one of these, they are liable to come away with the
wrong impression about the language itself.  It'd be much nicer if
their first experience with Scheme was a friendly interface like
DrScheme instead.  If they wanted to, they could then step "out of the 
box" into MzScheme instead.

>				    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.

Brent Fulgham has kindly helped us get into the Debian loop in some
fashion -- I don't know if we're actually part of the distribution,
but at least we are registered with Debian.  Maybe Brent can elaborate
on that.

> 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!

> If we want MzScheme to gain mindshare over Guile, it needs to get more
> widely distributed, and not just at universities.

Yep.  Really, it's not for lack of trying.  Perhaps we made a mistake
by approaching RedHat first, and got burned by the experience.

Shriram