Re: [Chicken-users] google summer of code

[felix winkelmann]

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 4:24 AM, Alex Shinn <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>  Actually, that would be far more work than I'd be interested
>  in.  The different macro systems all have their own
>  representations of hygiene information, and getting them all
>  to work together would be a pain.

Quite right. A unified system would simplify many things
tremendously.

>
>  What I would probably end up doing is choosing a single
>  macro system to be required for the module system.  Probably
>  riaxpander because Taylor Campbell will actively support it
>  and it already handles syntax-rules, syntactic-closures and
>  explicit renaming.  Implementing syntax-case on top of it
>  wouldn't be much work either if people really, honestly felt
>  they wanted that (except identifier-syntax - it would be
>  easy enough for someone else to add but I couldn't bring
>  myself to dirty the macro semantics so badly).

I would recommend to start from scratch.

>
>  Though if people want syntax-case I'd like some rationale
>  before working on it, and clear reasons as to why they don't
>  like the more straightforward alternatives.

Personally, I find complex syntax-case macros show that
classic Lisp-style low-level macros aren't so bad after all.

In simple cases syntax-rules is sufficient and pleasant to
look at. For complex macros syntax-rules can be used
and some not necessarily convenient but managable
solution (synclosures or explicit renaming) that is universal
(allows non-hygiene) would be sufficient. So what would be
needed is

syntax-rules
define-macro
some hygienic low-level facility


cheers,
felix