Re: A new Scheme tutorial (Jean Abou Samra)

[Jean Abou Samra]

Thanks a lot Peter and others (privately) for your suggestions.
Sorry for the very late reply, I've been distracted by other
things. Your comments are most appreciated.


Le 13/07/2022 à 18:15, Peter Toye a écrit :
> This looks great! Just what I'd needed a couple of years back when I 
> was still programming.
>
> I've only just started with it, but there are a few niggling comments 
> about the English version. I've only got to page 2 (getting started) 
> so far.
>
>   * On my browser (Firefox in Windows) the 'v. latest' is too close to
>     the bottom of the main frame, and I can't click on the
>     'previous/next/index' without very careful manipulation of the
>     slider. Can it be moved up a cm or so?


This is a bit tricky because I don't know how to test it
locally without uploading on Readthedocs, and I'm bad at
CSS ...


>   * On page 1 (Why Scheme?) it's slightly better English to say 'There
>     is no single implementation of Scheme'
>   * On page 2 (Getting started) the comment about testing under
>     Windows is not translated into English! I suggest 'I am unable to
>     test these commands under Windows. If they do not work, write to
>     the list.'
>   * Again on page 2, the commands don't work! You forgot to add the
>     'lilypond'.
>     C:\Program Files (x86)\LilyPond\usr\bin>lilypond
>     scheme-sandbox works fine on my machine.
>   * On page 2 'Literals' the comment about decimal numbers isn't
>     translated. I'm not sure about the best translation of 'nombres
>     décimaux'. Personally I'd use 'floating-point numbers' on the
>     grounds that all numbers, including integers, are decimal.

Done.


>   * The comment 'and a few others' about the characters allowed in
>     variable names is rather annoying. How does a user know what to
>     expect if they use a forbidden character? A list would be really
>     useful.


Um. The precise rules for valid identifiers are described
as a formal grammar on pages 12 and 13 of R6RS
<http://www.r6rs.org/final/r6rs.pdf>
(see the <identifier> production). I'll try to put
a list of a few characters that are valid and which
are useful to know about, like ? and ! because they
occur regularly at the end of function names (for
predicates and side-effecting functions), but I'd
rather not explain the full rules, as they are quite
complex ...

Best,
Jean