Aaron Hsu writes:
We have, for some inexplicable reason, chosen to follow the wording and style of R5RS rather than the better, more precise, and clearer stylistic approach of the R6RS standard. I do not understand this except that it serves as a sort of reactionary statement against R6RS, which is not good. R6RS did a lot simply in standard organization and layout that we should have maintained, as well as with language, which we did not maintain. While we have incorporated a good deal of wording from R6RS, it would have been better to have started with R6RS as a base, rather than cherry picking from it.
The WG decided by unanimous consent to take no action on this ticket.
If we had worked from R6RS, it would be practically impossible to determine the changes between R5RS and R7RS-small without great (and very fallible) human efforts. As for precision and clarity, the former does not automatically lead to the latter. I for one do not believe that changing every occurrence of "number" to "number object" actually helped either precision or clarity. Nor is it clear to me that the supposedly better organization of R6RS was worth sacrificing the knowledge that many Schemers have about where to find things in R5RS that helps find their analogues in R7RS-small.