Re: Reference documentation of modules and library

[Noah Lavine]

I definitely agree that the "Guile Modules" / "Standard Library"
distinction doesn't make sense. I never knew why it was that way until
I saw this email.

It's not so obvious to me how things should be organized, but I think
base namespace / modules is a pretty natural distinction. The
distinction between commonly-used libraries and more specialized ones
doesn't make as much sense, because different people will use
different libraries.

Noah

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Mike Gran <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi-
>
> So I was reading through the reference manual.  There is the
> "API Reference" and "Guile Modules" chapter followed by the
> "Standard Library" chapter.  I know historically why they
> are separated that way, but if you didn't know about guile-lib
> you aren't going to understand why they're divided that way.
>
>
> What would you think moving things around to give each chapter
> a better identity?  Maybe something like this
>
> ---
>
>
> API REFERENCE AND STANDARD LIBRARY
> These are all the procedures that exist in the base namespace, and
>  don't require "use-module"
>
> EXTENDED LIBRARY
> These procedures require "use-module"
>
>
> ---
>
> or alternately, you could split them up by how specialized they
> are.
>
>
> API REFERENCE
> "This is all your basic language stuff."
>
>
> STANDARD LIBRARY
> "These procedures provide commonly-used functionality."
>
>  - posix
>  - r6rs
>
>  - srfi
>  - formatted output
>
>  - getopt
>  - pattern matching
>  - readline
>  - pretty-printing
>  - ftw - buffered input
>  - expect
>
> EXTENDED LIBRARY
> "These are more specialized libraries"
>
>  - http
>  - profiling
>  - sxml
>  - sxml match
>  - texinfo
>  - queues
>  - streams
>
>
> 3rd-PARTY LIBRARIES
> "These 3rd party libraries are not included in Guile but
> provide important functionality.  Their use is encouraged."
>  - slib
>  - jacal
>  - (maybe bitrotten scsh)
>  - (maybe others??)
>
> What do you think?
>
> -Mike
>