Lately I've been trying to read more about people's arguments both for
and against R6RS, and in the process of doing so, I've ended up
reading a lot about people's take on R4RS.

From what I can gather, R4RS is really quite good. In fact, I get the
impression that it is well loved as I see different Scheme code-bases
being written for R4RS.

R4RS only suggested macros, though, and didn't include them in the
standard. Why then, did they get added to the standard in R5RS?

Macros are powerful, but did Scheme need them? Who were the
proponents, and opponents, and why?

How might Scheme look had it not gone down the macro path? Would
records have been added?

Since the contributors to R4RS and R5RS are virtually identical,
probably there wasn't a schism, but, macros seem like a "big" addition.