Marc Feeley wrote:
On 18-Aug-07, at 10:39 AM, Harold Ancell wrote:
Since we're doing jokes, and since RnRS is itself based on a joke (a play on the Algol report) -- earlier today I thought of a better name which I think the newly inaugurated R5.97RS should be called by when it becomes a final standard: GrandScheme.
"Grand", of course, being French for large, which is the exact opposite of the ideal for a Scheme standard. OH! I'll be here all week!
Not bad, but not as good as "R6RS!". We *do* need a distinctive name for that which we sincerely hope someday becomes "The Language Formerly Known As Scheme", assuming the Steering Committee doesn't do a major last minute intervention. I think I'll use GrandScheme for now, it works just as well for native English speakers.
We also need a name for what we've got, the R5RS based implementations that will at most have a R6RS compatibility package (the route Larceny and Gauche will be taking).
I've been using "UncommonScheme" as a working name; I don't dislike Common Lisp per se, but there's reasons I switched....
The name that comes to mind first is "Schemer". That's the original name for the Scheme language. The "R" at the end was dropped because the file system was limited to 6 characters. I also like the ring of "The Language Formerly Known As Scheme" (perhaps because I love Monty Python).
I *know* I should Google for this, but it's Saturday -- Google deserves a day of rest. So how did "Scheme" get its name? I know Lisp stands for Lis(t) P(rocessing), and you just said it was originally called "Schemer" but only 6-character names were allowed. That implies a 36-bit machine to me, which would be either an IBM 704/9/90/94/44 architecture or a PDP 6/10/DecSystem 10/20 architecture.
By the way, nearly all language implementations are extended subsets of a standard anyhow. :) So how about "EMEHCS", which stands for "Enhanced Multifarious Extended Hierarchical Computing Subset".
I'm out of the running for the book -- got one at list price. :)