115 lines
5.5 KiB
HTML
115 lines
5.5 KiB
HTML
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html>
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<head>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
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<!-- This manual documents Guile version 3.0.10.
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Copyright (C) 1996-1997, 2000-2005, 2009-2023 Free Software Foundation,
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Inc.
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Copyright (C) 2021 Maxime Devos
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Copyright (C) 2024 Tomas Volf
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Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
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under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
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any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
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Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
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copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
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Documentation License." -->
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<title>Early Days (Guile Reference Manual)</title>
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<meta name="description" content="Early Days (Guile Reference Manual)">
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<link href="index.html" rel="start" title="Top">
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<link href="Concept-Index.html" rel="index" title="Concept Index">
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<link href="index.html#SEC_Contents" rel="contents" title="Table of Contents">
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<link href="History.html" rel="up" title="History">
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<link href="A-Scheme-of-Many-Maintainers.html" rel="next" title="A Scheme of Many Maintainers">
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<link href="The-Emacs-Thesis.html" rel="prev" title="The Emacs Thesis">
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</head>
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<body lang="en">
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<div class="subsection-level-extent" id="Early-Days">
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<div class="nav-panel">
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<p>
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Next: <a href="A-Scheme-of-Many-Maintainers.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">A Scheme of Many Maintainers</a>, Previous: <a href="The-Emacs-Thesis.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">The Emacs Thesis</a>, Up: <a href="History.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">A Brief History of Guile</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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</div>
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<hr>
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<h4 class="subsection" id="Early-Days-1"><span>9.1.2 Early Days<a class="copiable-link" href="#Early-Days-1"> ¶</a></span></h4>
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<p>Tom Lord was the first to fully concentrate his efforts on an
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embeddable language runtime, which he named “GEL”, the GNU Extension
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Language.
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</p>
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<p>GEL was the product of converting SCM, Aubrey Jaffer’s implementation
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of Scheme, into something more appropriate to embedding as a library.
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(SCM was itself based on an implementation by George Carrette, SIOD.)
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</p>
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<p>Lord managed to convince Richard Stallman to dub GEL the official
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extension language for the GNU project. It was a natural fit, given
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that Scheme was a cleaner, more modern Lisp than Emacs Lisp. Part of
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the argument was that eventually when GEL became more capable, it
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could gain the ability to execute other languages, especially Emacs
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Lisp.
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</p>
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<p>Due to a naming conflict with another programming language, Lee Thomas
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suggested a new name for GEL: “Guile”. Besides being a recursive
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acronym, “Guile” craftily follows the naming of its ancestors,
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“Planner”, “Conniver”, and “Schemer”. (The latter was truncated
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to “Scheme” due to a 6-character file name limit on an old operating
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system.) Finally, “Guile” suggests “guy-ell”, or “Guy L.
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Steele”, who, together with Gerald Sussman, originally discovered
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Scheme.
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</p>
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<p>Around the same time that Guile (then GEL) was readying itself for
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public release, another extension language was gaining in popularity,
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Tcl. Many developers found advantages in Tcl because of its shell-like
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syntax and its well-developed graphical widgets library, Tk. Also, at
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the time there was a large marketing push promoting Tcl as a
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“universal extension language”.
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</p>
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<p>Richard Stallman, as the primary author of GNU Emacs, had a particular
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vision of what extension languages should be, and Tcl did not seem to
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him to be as capable as Emacs Lisp. He posted a criticism to the
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comp.lang.tcl newsgroup, sparking one of the internet’s legendary
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flamewars. As part of these discussions, retrospectively dubbed the
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“Tcl Wars”, he announced the Free Software Foundation’s intent to
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promote Guile as the extension language for the GNU project.
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</p>
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<p>It is a common misconception that Guile was created as a reaction to
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Tcl. While it is true that the public announcement of Guile happened
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at the same time as the “Tcl wars”, Guile was created out of a
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condition that existed outside the polemic. Indeed, the need for a
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powerful language to bridge the gap between extension of existing
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applications and a more fully dynamic programming environment is still
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with us today.
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</p>
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</div>
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<hr>
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<div class="nav-panel">
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<p>
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Next: <a href="A-Scheme-of-Many-Maintainers.html">A Scheme of Many Maintainers</a>, Previous: <a href="The-Emacs-Thesis.html">The Emacs Thesis</a>, Up: <a href="History.html">A Brief History of Guile</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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