RE: should GOOPS be built-in?

["Reynolds, Gregg" <greynolds at datalogics dot com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Maciej Jennifer Stachowiak [mailto:mstachow@alum.mit.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 2:45 PM
> 
> Lack of documentation is also a major problem. But I am 
> unsure where to
> put
> the focus here. Obviously reference documentation for all
> Scheme-accessible
> procedures and syntax is essential, and thanks to Greg's work it's
> becoming
> a reality. But past that, what's most important to build the kind of
> community
> that Guile needs to be a successful project? Should additional docs be
> targetted
> at people using Guile from the Scheme level, either standalone or
> embedded in
> an app, at people who want to embed Guile in applications, or 
> at people
> who
> are interested in hacking Guile itself? Should it be in tutorial or
> user's
> guide form, or perhaps some more sparse form still for internals docs?
> 
> I would appreciate feedback on this issue.
> 

Hello.  Gregg here.  Normally I just lurk 'n stuff, but at the very least I
think I can help in the vitally important area of Gregometrics.  Low Greg(g)
density is bad for any project, and since I'm far denser than the other
Gregs here (just look at all those g's!) I feel I've already helped.

Now then.  I'd say you've got a good start with the list of potential
audiences you just wrote.  Stick that up on a web page, and solicit feedback
from the various classes of users.  Personally I'd love to be able to use
Guile for all of my text processing needs.  Especially for XML docs (a Guile
facility of some kind that does XSLT-like things gets my vote as the Project
Most Likely to Attract Outside Attention and Be Really Useful to Just About
Everybody).  But I haven't the slightest idea to what extent other user
communities even exist.  Considering Guile's ambitious scope, some good old
fashioned market research seems to be in order.  Not necessarily in order to
drive the design, but to prioritize doco projects.

I suggest a series of manuals/cookbooks.  Stick with the Guile/Scheme
conspiracy motif; for ex:

	Insinewations:  Embedding Guile 
	The Intriguer's Guide to BeGuiling the Machine
	Rasputin's Recipes:  Using Guile to Get Your Way!
	Guile: A Tale of Intrigue
	Age and Treachery v. Youth and Guile:  A New Paradigm?
	etc.

Even more important:  do you have your O'Reilly Animal picked out yet?

The only reason I learned to use perl is because the original Camel book got
the basics explained in about 10 pages, and then I was able to flip to the
recipes in the back of the book and hack out some Real Working Perl scripts,
all within about 30 minutes of picking up the book.  I think a similar
repository of small, well-defined tasks with solutions would be a Really
Good Thing for Guile.  In fact I'm inclined to think that accumulating stuff
to go into such a repository should be a higher priority than nicely written
prose intros 'n stuff, even though I think the latter quite important too.
But if you want people to say to themselves "Hey!  I think I'll try that
Guile thingie everybody's been talking about!", you've got to have some
stuff 'n stuff that people can actually Do within about the first 10 minutes
of futzing with it.  Stuff that even a manager could handle.

Maybe that's a nother web page:  send us your war stories; what problem did
you have to solve and how did you use Guile to solve it?

Obviously I'm not thinking so much in terms of Guile qua extension language
as Guile qua something that lets me use Scheme to do lots of little useful
jobs with text files and directories.

You'll have to just consider this feedback 'n stuff for now.  Much as I'd
love to contribute some code 'n stuff, I've got about tenteen other things
that Must Be Done, especially during holidaytime.  On the other hand, I just
made the switch to Linux at home!  Oops, I meant GNU/Linux.  Yay!  From
os/2.  Boo-hoo.  So maybe next century I'll be able to be more helpful.

BTW, is the address for CVS access on the web site still good?  I haven't
been able to get at it from work - I think its that nasty firewall.  Should
anybody be able to checkout the code, or is it limited to approved parties?

-gregg