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 16 Using Guile as an Extension Language
 ***************************************
 
 The chapters in this part of the manual explain how to use Guile as a
 powerful application extension language.
 
    An important change for the 1.6.x series of Guile releases is that
 the GH interface is now deprecated.  For the reasoning behind this
 decision, see  GH deprecation.  The GH interface will continue
 to be supported for the 1.6.x and 1.8.x release series, but will be
 dropped thereafter, so developers are encouraged to switch
 progressively to the scm interface.  The last chapter in this part of
 the manual ( GH) documents both how to use GH and how to switch
 from GH to scm.
 
    The Guile developers believe that clarification of the GH vs. scm
 debate, and the consequent deprecation of the GH interface, are in the
 long term interests of the project.  However it does create an
 unfortunate situation for developers who want to start a project using
 Guile and so read the manual to find out how to proceed.  They will
 discover that the GH interface, although quite well documented, is
 deprecated, but that there is almost no adequate documentation for its
 theoretical replacement, the scm interface.  Moreover, the scm interface
 still has the odd few rough edges which need smoothing down.
 
    Therefore, although deprecated, it is quite OK to continue to use
 the GH interface if you feel uncomfortable with the `scm_' interface as
 it stands today.  By the time that support for GH is dropped, we plan to
 have thoroughly documented the `scm_' interface, and to have enhanced it
 such that conversion from GH to the `scm_' interface will be very
 straightforward, and probably mostly automated.
 
    As far as documentation of the scm interface is concerned, the
 current position is that it is a bit confused, but that the situation
 should improve rapidly once the 1.6.0 release is out.  The plan is to
 refocus the bulk of Part II, currently "Guile Scheme", as the "Guile API
 Reference" so that it covers both Scheme and C interfaces.  (This makes
 sense because almost all of Guile's primitive procedures on the Scheme
 level -- e.g. `memq' -- are also available as C level primitives in the
 scm interface -- e.g. `scm_memq'.)  There will then remain a certain
 amount of Scheme-specific (such as the "Basic Ideas" chapter) and
 C-specific documentation (such as SMOB usage and interaction with the
 garbage collector) to collect into corresponding chapters.
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