Re: [Chicken-users] ideas

[Peter Keller]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 04:07:10PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> Peter Keller <address@hidden> writes:
> > > > Perhaps we need to make the chicken webpages bigger than a single
> > > > page? :-) A page listing "ongoing projects" and "requests for
> > > > implementation" (as it were) might be handy...
> > 
> > I've been wondering about this. In addition, if this change happens, we
> > should have a "known uses" section where people who write applications
> > in chicken should get an entry with a little snippet about what the
> > application is.  That way, prospective chicken users will see that it is
> > being used for real systems(that might be similar to what they want to
> > do, making them think that using chicken would be a good solution for
> > them since it maps from the problem domain they have) and therefore
> > has been beat on for a while and most of the serious bugs shaken out.
> 
> Perhaps a wiki? (Or should it be a "Chicki").

What about cvs? We could just stick the pages to be updated into cvs, and set
up a cron job on www.call-with-current-continuation.org to cvs update it
every 10 minutes or something. Then, we just make the changes to the tables
that say what the "ongoing projects", "requests for implementation", and 
"known uses" are and they'll get updated in 10 minutes.

You could use modules in the current repository to set it up for the web 
pages.

> For now, I must admit I'm having a few problems, most of which better
> documentation might fix. I don't quite understand the foreign function
> interface, for example, which frustrates trying to play with things
> other people have done. Documentation would be a help. (I find
> frequently that the existing document often has what I want but that
> it is a bit hard to find things in it... What is used to build
> manual.html anyway?)

Yeah, the lack of documentation for the FFI is a hardship. Dealing with
non-GC allocated memory is hairy without good documentation. The manual
definitely needs a real example of the FFI. 

What questions do you have? I've been messing around heavily with the FFI
for weeks now so I might be able to help out.

> I've also had some weird problems with building. chicken-config and
> csc come out in the bin directory as things that are neither
> executables nor anything else -- file(1) cryptically calls them
> "data". My own fault largely for not understanding more of how the
> build process works -- I'll have to go in and debug it. I don't know
> how many other people are hacking Chicken on NetBSD at the moment so I
> may be on my own there for now.

Sorry, I've never run into this problem. I use gcc with chicken-config
in my makefiles.

> But, to emphasize above all else: Documentation, documentation,
> documentation. The easier it is for people to learn how to do things,
> the faster they'll "come on board"...

This is very true. _Very_ true.

-pete