Scheme standardization meeting

[Chris Haynes <chaynes@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>]

The proposal to form an IEEE Working Group on Scheme (let's call it
the "working group" from now on) mentioned in my last note has been
approved by the Microprocessor Standards Committee (MSC).  There are a
few more administrative steps before it is completely official, but no
difficulty is expected.  The standardization process has begun; wish
us luck!

The first meeting of the working group will be on Wednesday, July
27th, 1988, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm (or later if really necessary)
following the Lisp and Functional Programming Conference at Snowbird,
Utah.  The meeting room will be posted at the conference facility.

The agenda for the first working group meeting should at least include
discussion of the following items:

   - introductions and brief remarks about the standards process
   - scope and purpose of standardization effort
   - expected time schedule for standard development
   - time and place of next meeting
   - netmail and other means of communicating between meetings
   - proposed ways for the standard to differ from the Revised^3 Report.

The last point is clearly the most important and should take most of
the time.  Specific proposals should be stated in advance and included
in the agenda if possible.

Very briefly, my current expectation (reflecting the wishes of the
study group mentioned in my last note) is that the working group will
serve to "filter" the work of the Revised^n Report authors, removing
features deemed too experimental for standardization and adding nothing
of substance to the language.  The following meeting will be in about
six months, at a place as yet unknown.  A "trial standard" should be 
completed in about two years, with a full standard perhaps two years
after that.

Let's use the general Scheme news group (now comp.lang.scheme) for
discussion of the agenda and related matters prior to the meeting.
At the meeting we may agree to form another news group for subsequent
communication.

Your suggestions on agenda items and candidates for filtering are
welcome.

-- Chris Haynes