Are we dead or alive? (was Re: a good volunteer)

[Ray Dillinger]

On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, John Morrison wrote:

>However, given what I really want is a LispM, I figure I've got two
>options:
>
>(1) The "Stay Focused" Option: keep slogging away now, and, sometime
>much later, just use Kawa (or the equivalent then-available Scheme/Lisp
>to bytecode compiler).

I think there's something you should know if you're considering
this option.  That is, it is not possible to build a conforming
scheme using the Java Virtual machine.  It is flatly impossible
as far as I know to build a properly tail-recursive language
with first-class continuations when you have to fight the Java
Virtual Machine's security-inspired stack discipline.  Per
Bothner (author of kawa) has talked about this on
comp.lang.scheme, and Kawa is not a conforming implementation. 


				Ray Dillinger