; Return your ballot to <ratification-vote@r6rs.org>.
; Detailed instructions appear after the sample ballot.

(
 ;; Replace this example address with the address you supplied when
 ;; you registered.  We will use this address to send you an
 ;; acknowledgment of your vote.
 (email-address "fred@example.org")

 ;; Just leave this alone:
 (draft-version "5.97")

 ;; Replace the string "Maybe" below with one of the two strings "Yes"
 ;; or "No".  "Yes" for a vote in favor of ratifying the current draft
 ;; as R6RS.  "No" for a vote against ratifying the current draft as
 ;; R6RS.
 (ratify "Maybe")

 ;; Supply an explanation of your vote.  If you are voting against
 ;; ratification (you placed "No" in the previous entry), then an
 ;; explanation is mandatory.  If you are voting in favor of
 ;; ratification (you placed "Yes" in the previous entry), then you
 ;; are permitted to remove this entry, but you are encouraged to
 ;; explain your vote anyway.
 ;;
 ;; Please remember to escape any occurrences of the double quote or
 ;; backslash characters in your explanation.
 (explanation "I am an idiot for not replacing this text.")

 )

As with your registration form, a ballot is an S-expression.  In
particular, a ballot is a list of two element lists.  The CAR of each
sub-list is a keyword symbol, and the CADR is a value string.  In
other words, a ballot is an A-list.

Elements with the keywords `email-address', `draft-version' and
`ratify' must appear.  An element with the keyword `explanation' must
appear if you are voting against ratifying the current draft, but is
optional if you are voting in favor of ratification.

Prepare your ballot using R5RS syntax only, as we will be using an
R5RS compliant Scheme to process it.  Note that this effectively
limits you to the basic ASCII character set, even inside of strings.
(In fact, R5RS does not even specify the effect of line breaks in
strings -- but we will promise you that your line breaks will remain
line breaks.)

Mail your completed ballot to: ratification-vote@r6rs.org.  Your
message text should be formatted so that we can extract the ballot
from your message with a single call to READ.  (In particular you
needn't worry about unparsable text that appears -after- the ballot.)

While we would prefer that you send us your ballot in a plain text
message without using any multipart MIME features, we can handle any
MIME structured message that contains -some- text/plain part that
contains your ballot.

There are two things that we specifically cannot handle: First, if
your ballot only appears in text/html format, we will refuse it.
Second, we really do mean it when we say that we are going to parse
your ballot using a single call to READ.  This means that things like:

   > ((foo "...")
   >  (bar "..."))

or:

   ----- Forwarded message -----
   ((foo "...")
    (bar "..."))

will NOT work!  In the former case, READ will return the symbol whose
name is ">", and in the latter case the token "-----" is not even a
legal symbol.

Also please note that many mail clients will automatically insert line
breaks in your text before sending it.  This is most likely to effect
the text of your explanation.  (If you browse the statements from the
registration phase, you will see many spurious line breaks that were
"helpfully" inserted by mail clients.)  If you want to avoid this, you
might prepare your ballot in a separate file using whatever tool it is
that you normally use for editing source code, and then include the
contents of that file in your message as an attachment of type
text/plain.

If you think the previous few paragraphs of warnings demonstrate that
this whole email-an-S-expression thing isn't such a hot idea, I have
to say that I agree with you.  I had not previously appreciated the
extent to which people have lost control of the format of the email
that they send.

-- 
$Id: ballot.txt,v 1.2 2007/07/29 20:42:38 alan Exp $
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