Grant Rettke skrev:
> 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?

The philophy of Scheme has always been to include general constructs
with a clear semantics. At the time R4RS was written there were quite
a few persons doing research in macros. Instead of choosing one
low-level macro mechanism and fearing the choice had to be remade
later, one simply omitted choosing a low-level macro mechanism.

If you are interested in the history, the RRRS archive is gold.
Also (why do I suddenly think of Palin?) compare the dates of
the papers on macros on readscheme.org to the date of R4RS.

--
Jens Axel Søgaard