R7RS

What do you think so far? It's way smaller than R6RS.

>>21
Obviously, so that code written for the minimal implementations will be usable by the larger implementations.
I know this is obvious from what you wrote but it is not obvious from a real world perspective. In the real world I'm going to do things that simply aren't in the spec. Portable code is the most massive eschatological myth ever devised, and it is a religion whose followers should be listened to only at one's own peril. But I guess this is because my own focus is on interacting with the real world and the real world isn't portable. I understand a lot of people just write code to run on Linux and Windows and consider this ``portable'' if it can draw the same shapes on the screen. (Or to run on different Linuses and consider that portable under the same criterion.)

>>22
The small language is meant for educators, students, and hobbyists wishing to learn programming or wanting to learn how to develop a minimalist Scheme compiler/interpreter.
What part of R⁴RS is insufficient for this purpose?

The big language is meant for people who want to use a comprehensive Scheme for real world projects.
Even the massive pile of shit that is C++ is not comprehensive enough for the real world. The Scheme steering committee will surely never make it. But particular distributions can.