[r6rs-discuss] Stateful codecs and inefficient transcoding

[John Cowan]

William D Clinger scripsit:

> Agreed.  Note, however, that mixing binary with textual
> i/o, and mixing different transcoders for textual i/o,
> was (in my opinion) regarded as a requirement.  That
> requirement already implies cutting streams into pieces
> that use different transcoders (or none at all).
> 
> Should the Scheme community agree that this perceived
> requirement should be dropped, it ought to be possible
> to come up with a simpler design for the i/o system.

I believe it should be dropped: it complicates the general
system in favor of a special case which should be handled
by using the R6RS library for binary input and doing one's
own decoding.  It is far more important to be able to
handle encodings in common use than it is to handle
mixed binary/textual encoding.

-- 
How they ever reached any  conclusion at all    <cowan at ccil.org>
is starkly unknowable to the human mind.        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --"Backstage Lensman", Randall Garrett