[gambit-list] How to use a module?

Hendrik Boom hendrik at topoi.pooq.com
Fri Oct 14 11:31:29 EDT 2011


On Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:33:00 +0100, Benjohn Barnes wrote:

> On 14 Oct 2011, at 04:11, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>> 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 ...)
> 
> Hi Hendrik,
> 
> The module system is Blackhole. Yes, it is separate from Gambit. I
> volunteered to fix the documentation for Mikael about the use / import
> confusion, but then didn't – apologies. I also volunteered to write a
> usage guide for Blackhole for Per (the maintainer) based on some very
> useful emails he sent me, but I didn't do that either, sorry.

Yeah, I saw that offer on gmane's mailing list archive.  I was thinking 
of doing that myself, since it hadn't been done yet, but was delaying 
because I thought it better to make sure I knew the facts  first.  But 
yes, go ahead.  I'll leave it alone.  .odt does't go through revision  
control well, so merging disparate updates isn't automatic.

> 
> I've just downloaded Openoffice to have a go at fixing the guide.

OpenOffice seems to be in the process of being superseded by LibreOffice, 
the free fork of the codebase that started after Oracle tried to take it 
proprietary.  You might want to consider it for future work.  I've found 
it useful; OpenOffice on Debian seems to have lost a feature I relied on; 
LibreOffice restored it.  Most Linux distros now provide LibreOffice.

> I'll
> forward the emails from Per on to you as I think you'll find them
> helpful.

The confusing thing, besides things having the wrong names, is that 
there's no mention that BlackHole needs to be installed separately.  Had 
I known that, I would have looked to install it, rather than thinking it 
was already there.  The document *does* link to downloading and 
installation instructions for Gambit.  Linking to the same for BlackHole, 
perhaps in the section where modules were discussed, would have been a 
*huge* help.


> 
> Thanks,
> 	Benjohn

You're welcome.

-- hendrik





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