Re: Scheme Programming Reference

[Brandon Ibach <bibach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Jack Fitzpatrick <jfitzpatrick@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> Scheme is a very elegant language that seems uniquely formulated for
> document processing.  There are some excellent text's, e.g. Dybvig's "The
> Scheme Programming Language" that make it accessible to even us "cookbook"
> programmers (not just guru PhD types).  You can download one of the various
> PC Scheme's and work the examples in the book.  It really is fun--recursion
> is more interesting to code than looping structures.  And now that I
> "understand"  DSSSL enough to do what I need to do, it's fun also.  (What is
> it about document processing that's so compelling for us?)  Unfortunately it
> is just too bloody difficult to get up to speed on DSSSL independently.  As
> a DSSSL user you have no choice but to follow this list in order to pick up
> a little gem of "secret" information here and there.  I assume that there is
> no market for a comprehensive DSSSL text that delineates the actual state of
> the art--not just the standard, but this is what is needed.
> 
   What, I believe, is needed is a book that does for DSSSL what
Goldfarb's "SGML Handbook" did for SGML.  It's actually a
well-annotated copy of the standard itself.  In the case of DSSSL, a
few background chapters on Scheme would probably also be needed, but
not that much.  From what I've seen in some Scheme tutorials and such,
there is a *lot* of Scheme that isn't in DSSSL.
   I have contemplated the idea of writing such a book, but as you
say, there probably isn't enough of a market for such an item to
convince a publisher to fund the writing, and I am far too busy with
my "day job" to find the time to take on such an ambitious task.  The
best I can hope to do is find some time to contribute to Mulberry's
documentation project (which I have been quite a failure at so far).

-Brandon :)


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