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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: distinguishing macros from combinations
Message-ID: <4298@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 11 Mar 91 15:29:12 GMT
References: <13849@life.ai.mit.edu>
Sender: news@aiai.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
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In article <13849@life.ai.mit.edu> jaffer@gerber.ai.mit.edu (Aubrey Jaffer) writes:
>Using a prefix character (like `&') to prefix all macro names has the
>additional benifit that, even if the Scheme standard committees do not
>put this in the specs, it can be used as an element of style, much as
>most C programmers use uppercase names for #defines.

I am happy for you to use this style (even though I wouldn't find
it all that helpful myself), but I definitely do not want such a
rule to be part of the definition of Scheme.

One of thge main reasons I'd object is that I find the "&" ugly
and intrusive.  Other conventions such as using upper case or
different brakctes ([] or {}, say) also suffer from aesthetic
and practical objections.  However if there were a program that
produced Algol-style listings, I wouldn't mind if it put macro
names in bold face along with if, define, etc.

BTW, does anyone out there have such a program?