typedef void * SCM

[Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen at cs dot uu dot nl>]

[please CC me on discussions on this topic. I am not subscribed to the
list.]

>> I already talked about this to Jim and Maciej, but this is probably a
>> no-go. As you point out, passing structs around will affect
>> performance negatively, so a it would be a compilation-only feature.

>Passing structs does not damage performance for gcc users
[..]
> Trying to
>outsmart the optimiser is a dumb idea when you have source code to the
>optimiser anyhow. 

GUILE should run on any Unix with an ANSI C compiler, at least that is
what it says in the README file. If you suggest that this requirement
be dumped, then you should discuss that with Maciej & his gang.  Until
this decision is made, SCM can't be made a struct in the compiled
library.

>Anhow, performance should not be the issue against doing something
>that is philosophically the correct way to do it and for which optimisations
>can be made at a later date.

I would disagree on this. (But hey, I'm only a heavy GUILE-user.)

-- 

Han-Wen Nienhuys, hanwen@cs.uu.nl ** GNU LilyPond - The Music Typesetter 
      http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lilypond/index.html