Re: Internal visibility

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès)
() Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:37:39 +0200

   Instead, applications should be written against an
   encoding-oblivious API.  This is what core R5RS constructs
   and SRFI-1[34] provide at the Scheme level.

Unfortunately, that position doesn't provide a clean path
towards an encoding-knowledgable API.  Better would be to design
an encoding-knowledgable API now (or as soon as possible), with
the encoding value `unencoded' (or `8-bit-raw' or what-have-you)
as default.  This way, things are explicit and the (future)
changes to application code will be less invasive, or even
unnecessary.

In short, the current API is not actually "future proof" (yet).
Requiring obliviousness in the API makes for ugly work long term.

thi