[throwaway17_17]

In case someone is reading and wonders:

RnRS - Revised n Report on Scheme (where 1 <= n <= 7)

These are basically Scheme Editions. R5RS, R6RS, and R7RS are the ‘big ones’ that are commonly referenced, R7RS being issued in 2013 (5 — 1998, 6 — 2007).

SRFI - Scheme Request for Implementation

SFRI is basically an informal standards type document. SFRI’s are typically used to request a common library feature for implementation (more useful before R6RS which essentially introduces a functioning standard library for scheme. Most implementations acknowledge that they implement SFRI #n as a quick reference for what ‘extras’ are in their shipped stdlib.

Note that I think parent may have been rhetorically asking, or asking with heavy sarcasm. Also, I agree that the Manual is not written that well. It is pretty big, but if Guile is going to continue playing a role as the ‘Scheme of Record’ in GNU and in Linux more generally, it should meet modern expectations for documentation.

[goku12]

> Note that I think parent may have been rhetorically asking, or asking with heavy sarcasm.

Probably neither. It is what you ask when you read the guile manual. Scheme documentation in general is surprisingly bad, considering how simple it is compared to a complex language like Rust for instance. Books like SICP are good for the academically inclined, but are too verbose for anyone learning scheme for a specific purpose like scripting.