[gambit-list] How to use a module?

Matthew Koichi Grimes mkg at cs.nyu.edu
Fri Oct 14 10:57:23 EDT 2011


> The latter one could with benefit be switched from odt as source format to
html; you are the first one who asks for this.

For what it's worth, let me be the second who asks for this :) PDF docs are
unpopular because they take a while to load, they usually aren't well
hyperlinked, and individual pages can't be bookmarked in the browser.

As for Black Hole, one can argue that it should be kept as a separate
package, but there's nothing in that argument that says it can't be included
with the default Gambit installation. I would say the same for the SRFI's
floating around in Snow and Dumping Grounds. I would like for them to be
included by default, and be kept "separable" if that's something the user
cares about.

Such "batteries inculded" installations are nice because they encourage
exploratory programming by lowering the barrier to trying out new features
(e.g. SRFI's). They also lower the adoption barrier for Gambit as a whole,
by lessening fears that every little thing is going to be some obscure
installation chore. This is particularly important for non-mainstream
languages, which, with some justification, bear the stigma of being a pain
to set up.

-- Matt



On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 4:20 AM, Mikael <mikael.rcv at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/10/14 Hendrik Boom <hendrik at topoi.pooq.com>
>
>> Well, I found other items on gmane's archive of this mailing list.  IT
>> looks as if the answer is that Gambit itself doesn't provide modules at
>> all, despite the mention in the Tour of Scheme in Gambit.  But it seems
>> that there exists a completely separate module facility that can be used
>> with it.  With its own installation instructions.  And by the way, one
>> should use (import ...) instead of (use ...)
>>
>
> Indeed.
>
> Gambit as a Scheme environment is with benefit separated from module
> handling functionality, as module systems tend not to be 'universal'
> 'one-fits-everything' solutions.
>
> A Tour of Scheme in Gambit is intended to give a programmer an introductory
> glimpse of practical use of Gambit. In total one short chapter only touches
> Black Hole, as to show that you can do modules in Scheme and the benefit of
> it. This is one of in total two mentionings of Gambit-external libraries in
> the document, the other one being ssax-sxml.
>
>
>> Really, this information shouldn't be that hard to find.
>>
>
> With the generality of Scheme comes that the amount of possible setups are
> infinite.
>
> Thus the strong separation language environment from module system, module
> system from libraries.
>
> I understand you may have suggestions for improvement on the documentation
> about second or third of these, if so feel free to post these when you have
> them.
>
> And is there a good reason why so many manuals on the gambit web site are
>> in pdf, odt, and doc formats and not in the obvious web-friendly html?
>>
>
> What's in these formats are the documents "A Tour of Scheme in Gambit" and
> the Black Hole documentation, neither of which are Gambit manuals but solely
> Gambit-related documents, similar to what's collected on the Dumping
> grounds.
>
> Those docs were written in this format since it suited them at least of the
> time of writing. The further document is intended for print solely so for it
> a format other than html fits.
>
> The latter one could with benefit be switched from odt as source format to
> html; you are the first one who asks for this.
>
> I'll report again when I've worked through the BlackHole installation.
>>
>
> In relation with Black Hole, that you already downloaded at
> https://github.com/pereckerdal/blackhole , there is a bundle of libraries
> that can be used within the (std) module resolver at
> https://github.com/pereckerdal/blackhole-libs , also check some updates
> posted on this ml the 18:th of may this year.
>
> These are for the master branch. With the syntactictower branch of Black
> Hole, a set of SRFI:s are bundled, and this abovementioned bundle of
> libraries.
>
> Brgds
>
>
>> -- hendrik
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gambit-list mailing list
>> Gambit-list at iro.umontreal.ca
>> https://webmail.iro.umontreal.ca/mailman/listinfo/gambit-list
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gambit-list mailing list
> Gambit-list at iro.umontreal.ca
> https://webmail.iro.umontreal.ca/mailman/listinfo/gambit-list
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit-list/attachments/20111014/7a20b1a5/attachment.htm>


More information about the Gambit-list mailing list