[r6rs-discuss] Rationale issues

[William D Clinger]

Andre van Tonder wrote:
>   - (15.1) "Therefore, the parent clause only accepts other
>     record types defined using the syntactic layer." - I do not think
>     the argument given implies the necessity of the "therefore", since
>     an implementation can determine for itself whether the parent
>     has been defined via the syntactic layer and optimize or not based
>     on that determination.  More seriously, I think
>     this restriction impedes modularity - changing
>     a definition from syntactic to procedural in some library
>     may break dependent libraries even if no properties of the
>     record type (other than the mode of definition) has been changed.
>     In fact, the mode of definition becomes an extra property of the
>     data type, so the "syntactic layer" is not really a "layer" but
>     introduces new things.

+1

This is one of the two issues (the other being versions)
that, if left unrepaired in a candidate draft, would
make it impossible for me to advocate ratification of
that draft.

Will