## Getting Scheme ##
**Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family of
-programming languages. The other dialect is called "CommonLisp." Scheme is the
+programming languages. The other dialect is called "Common Lisp." Scheme is the
more clean and minimalistic dialect, and is what's mostly used in academic
circles.
Since the name change is so recent, you're likely to run across both sets of names.
-PLT Scheme had three salient components: the command-line version "mzscheme", a
-GUI extension "MrEd", and a teaching-friendly editor/front-end "DrScheme". In
-Racket these have been renamed "racket", "gracket", and "DrRacket",
+PLT/Racket stands to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML. It's one program among others for working with the language; and many of those programs (or web browsers) permit different extensions, have small variations, and so on.
+
+PLT Scheme had several components. The two most visible components for us
+were the command-line interpreter "mzscheme" and a teaching-friendly editor/front-end "DrScheme". In
+Racket these have been renamed "racket" and "DrRacket",
respectively.
+* In your web browser:
+
+ There is a (slow, bare-bones) version of Scheme available for online use at <http://tryscheme.sourceforge.net/>.
+
* **To install in Windows**
sudo port install rlwrap
- then instead of `mzscheme` (or `racket`) at the command-line, you should type `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
+ then if you ever use the command-line program `mzscheme` (or `racket`), you should start it by typing `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
keyboard arrows.
sudo apt-get rlwrap
- then instead of `mzscheme` (or `racket`) at the command-line, you should type `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
+ then if you ever use the command-line program `mzscheme` (or `racket`), you should start it by typing `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
keyboard arrows.
sudo port install ocaml caml-findlib
- As with Scheme, it's helpful to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
+ As with Scheme, it's helpful to also have rlwrap installed, and to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
keyboard arrows.
Here are the INSTALL notes:
<https://godirepo.camlcity.org/svn/lib-findlib/trunk/INSTALL>.
- As with Scheme, it's helpful to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
+ As with Scheme, it's helpful to also have rlwrap installed, and to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
keyboard arrows.