Re: guile-lib things

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Andy Wingo <address@hidden>
   Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 18:43:51 +0100

   2) Deep taxonomic hierarchies are too rigid.

any single taxonomy is too rigid.

probably if you wish to choose a single taxonomy, whether it is shallow
or deep, it will not fit w/ someone's world view somewhere.  however, if
you choose a single meta-language for describing and extending the "site
taxonomy", you have a better chance of creating something more flexible
and thus more generally useful, if the meta-language is complete.

for example, many "package systems" do not specify the contents of the
packages they provide, but instead specify a stylized interaction of the
packages w/ each other as well as w/ the package system.  a complete
system accomodates mostly-same-but-slightly-different alternatives for
both internal as well as external elements.

perhaps you (or whoever) could design guile-lib as the packaging system
for guile modules (both text and binary) and let interested programmers
do the rest.  a good exercise would be to see how to fit SLIB into such
a system, the figure of merit being the low amount of glue code and/or
manual typing required.  specify conformance but allow for indirection
as an implementation strategy instead of requiring change.

thi