RE: Name of the standard library

[Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be>]

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>> It would be easy to state in more places "the standard library of guile
>> is called ice-9 (see [history])".

>With no disrespect intended -- I understand it's a joke that was funny 
at one time -- "the standard library of Guile is called ice-9" sounds 
like "the unit of mass is called footballs". If so, why would a smart 
newbie learn more? One non-sequitur is likely to be followed by others.

Why wouldn’t this smart newbie learn more? I mean, in an alternate universe, the CIPM and or their predecessors might have liked soccer (cf. Ice-9) very much and called the unit of mass the ‘football’ instead of the ‘(kilo)gram’. In that universe, “the unit of mass is called footballs” would be a perfectly reasonable sentence (not a non-sequitur) that doesn’t prevent (SI) measurement newbies from learning more about the other SI units – the units don’t need to share a name with SI.

In case of Guile, (guile ...) seems a bit better than (ice-9 ...) (in cases where compatibility with other Schemes is attempted), but the name (ice-9 ...) hardly seems an obstacle to me – you need to name it _something_, so mentioning in the documentation what this _something_ is seems pretty reasonable to me (not a non-sequitur).

Best regards,
Maxime Devos.

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