Ikarus Scheme is an implementation of the Scheme programming
language.  The preliminary release of Ikarus implements the majority
of the features found in the current standard, the Revised 6 report
on the algorithmic language Scheme including full R6RS library and
script syntax, syntax-case, unicode strings, bytevectors,
user-defined record types, exception handling, conditions, and
enumerations.  Over 80% of the R6RS procedures and keywords are
currently implemented and subsequent releases will proceed towards
brining Ikarus to full R6RS conformance.

The main purpose behind releasing Ikarus early is to give Scheme
programmers the opportunity to experiment with the various new
features that were newly introduced in R6RS.  The most important of
such features is the ability to structure large programs into
libraries; where each library extends the language through
procedural and syntactic abstractions.  Many useful libraries can be
written using the currently supported set of R6RS features including
text processing tools, symbolic logic systems, interpreters and
compilers, and many mathematical and scientific packages.  It is my
hope that this release will encourage the Scheme community to write
and to share their most useful R6RS libraries.
