jdybnis: You are absolutely correct -- if my main problems with Scheme are long function and form names and a piddly standard library, it's easy enough to make Scheme what I want it to be.

Where I'm at right now is trying to decide if I want to bend CLisp or Gauche to doing my bidding. I just built Gauche, and I'm thrilled. It wouldn't build under Darwin, and I didn't have time to play with it.

Given that Gauche supports many of the SRFIs out of the box, the standard library problem is at least partially addressed. My last experience with the SRFIs was trying to get the reference code working with MzScheme, which was a nightmare.

Update: Four SRFIs go final

I just had a look at the Final SRFIs page, and four new SRFIs have been promoted. If you've been frustrated by the lack of exception/condition handling in Scheme, it's worth a look at these four.