Re: [Chicken-users] ideas

[Peter Keller]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 10:09:04PM +0100, address@hidden wrote:
Peter Keller wrote:
> > My thoughts go along the line of inspecting the CPAN archives for commonly
> > used perl packages, LWP, CGI(especially the param function), DBI, etc. and
> > lifting them for implementations in chicken.
> 
> Sounds like a good idea! (Although personally, my tastes run more to
> the python rather than the perl library style of things :-) )

Eh, it doesn't matter what kind of language we lift interfaces from. As
long as they work, are reasonably defined, and popular.

> I've been playing with little scheme webserver/servlet/cgi
> implementations for a while. I think that'll be the next itch I
> scratch. Hmm, I've just googled for LWP: looks like a good idea to
> "follow the standard" I suppose...

Yeah, one of the reasons I chose chicken for my contribution efforts is because
it understood how to speak to unix already. Standards are a good thing.

> I think DBI needs some serious looking at - I've adapted Oleg
> Kiselyov's db-util.scm for my own use (in chickenlib), but I didn't
> spend much time on it. I'm sure making a DBI-type SRFI would be easy
> pickings. It'd be very popular, too.

If you're interested in the DBI interface, go for it. As for me, I have my
next couple contributions planned out and that is a couple months work
already.

> Perhaps we need to make the chicken webpages bigger than a single
> page? :-) A page listing "ongoing projects" and "requests for
> implementation" (as it were) might be handy...

Yeah, that would be very nice.

> Perhaps savannah.gnu.org could set us up a CGI WikiWiki. Perhaps we
> could even write a WikiWiki in Scheme :-)

If we get far enough in our contributions to do such a thing, it would be
really neat!

> Actually, that reminds me - another thing I like having around in a
> language is persistence. Chicken has "serialize" and "deserialize",
> which are fine, but which can't flatten procedures. How could we get
> to a point where procedures could be externalized like any other
> datatype? I bet it's a long way off :-)

What exactly do you mean by this? What contexts would you use it in?

-pete