X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f
X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at neurotica.com
Message-ID: <50A90E3B.6090203@neurotica.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 11:35:07 -0500
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire AT neurotica DOT com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20121028 Thunderbird/16.0.2
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Scheme, was Re: [geda-user] Thoughts on gschem UI
References: <50A688B8 DOT 4090809 AT neurotica DOT com> <CC923058-B962-45B5-973D-EA03906430B9 AT noqsi DOT com> <50A6A265 DOT 6050300 AT neurotica DOT com> <4E8E6F31-EF8D-4540-BA86-7935C1C3E6D8 AT noqsi DOT com> <50A6A95C DOT 5030903 AT neurotica DOT com> <355DEF4F-51BB-44A8-A5F4-D8564E7E7885 AT noqsi DOT com> <20121116213601 DOT 13718 DOT qmail AT stuge DOT se> <66889AAB-3A82-4861-ACB0-B35A876EF6F4 AT noqsi DOT com> <CAC4O8c8s3837dD5so1hu-QOm8PW69sehVNNX7njQvnRGzXODGw AT mail DOT gmail DOT com> <B63F900B-2C12-48A4-AD4B-5A616078030B AT noqsi DOT com> <CAC4O8c9BAJe8_7KLL8aaGq30HCkj+q74DB9jywXRXogJzdqNzw AT mail DOT gmail DOT com> <50A83AAA DOT 6060500 AT jump-ing DOT de> <B1A7C9C1-5EAE-49AB-A03A-D5D4AFD3B0C0 AT noqsi DOT com> <50A8615E DOT 2080800 AT neurotica DOT com> <05730E0F-4DA1-47C8-80BB-5D4F37EFD94E AT noqsi DOT com> <50A8675D DOT 30509 AT neurotica DOT com> <CAM2RGhQ7aZf_yiOw4ibKTe5RnH7p8W50Maqo1YrVnLbJuhX-1Q AT mail DOT gmail DOT com> <F9FB3DFD-3D4D-4744-81E8-172D48E96FE0 AT noqsi DOT com>
In-Reply-To: <F9FB3DFD-3D4D-4744-81E8-172D48E96FE0@noqsi.com>
X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.5
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

On 11/18/2012 06:41 AM, John Doty wrote:
> Unfortunately, it's written in Haskell, which effectively means that
> only its author can write back ends for it. He has expressed an
> interest in rewriting it in Guile, which would put it more in the
> gEDA main stream, although it seems only a small minority of us can
> write Guile scripts.

  ...which is something that I just don't get.  Scheme has got to be the
simplest, cleanest programming language I've ever seen.  If a supposedly
"technical" person cannot wrap his/her brain around Scheme, then perhaps
a different line of work is in order.

  That said, I CAN write in Scheme, and I use gschem and PCB nearly
every day, and I've never found it necessary to write a Scheme script.

  I may eventually, and to be clear, I want the capability to remain,
but I've yet to run across a situation in which I need it.  I would like
to do some really neat stuff with it, but in the meantime (and this
seems to be the case perpetually) I have a deadline to meet for a new
design.

  The one comment I will make about the use of Guile in gschem is in the
context of config files.  Config files should not be executable
programs.  That's Just Plain Wrong for a bunch of reasons and it REALLY
needs to go away and be replaced by a proper configuration file syntax
and matching parser.  If one does not want to write Scheme scripts to
use with gschem, and has no other reason to learn Scheme, one should not
be required to learn it (even the basic tidbits of its tiny syntax
required for this task) just to set up a config file for a piece of
software.

                -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA