Re: [MIT-Scheme-devel] Keywords

[Taylor R Campbell]

What advantage does a disjoint data type have over writing (foo 'bar:
baz 'quux: zot)?  I know I am a relative newcomer to MIT Scheme and
thus unqualified to make judgements such as this, but that strikes me
as needless complication to the language and system, whose reader is
already too complicated.

As an aside, on the cosmetics you mentioned:

   [Trailing-colon keywords] just don't look anywhere near as good
   when the *values* are keywords, which they often are.

      (call-with-mumble
            option: default: name: none:)

Using keyword objects rather than (non-keyword) symbols as the
arguments to keyword parameters makes sense in Common Lisp only
because of its package system.  Fortunately Scheme is not afflicted by
that mess.