World: r3wp

Now it's evaluating, hm.  Wonder what I did before.

There're lots of confusions here when starting out :) beware !

Yes!

But I'm wondering why you want to subvert the meaning of the words 
in the block to your local meanings.

Well, I have one test block after another in a line

Surely you want the block to retain all its meanings ?

I'm used to C++, so I like scopes.  They make me happy :)

So I was wondering if I could let the concept of each test-block 
being a scope come from test-block itself

Rebol's contexts are better ! (But scope is good for compiling.)

Because if one test block goes:

var: 15

I don't want the next test-block to be entered with var set to 15

I want it set to none initially

Oh ok, so letting set-words be locals automatically.
	context block

Does context affect anything besides set-words ?

e.g. will everything else bind the same as you would have otherwise 
expected?

No, and the set-words are searched only in the block specified (not 
"sub-blocks").

This is getting into lfunc territory, I think.

Yes, I was thinking I should study that

It appears that REBOL is just more free about this by default.  You 
make a context for a whole bunch of code, the words bind freely, 
and then you blow it all away on the context level.

The question is, how deep do you go looking for set-words ?

Yes, much more free. And I love it that way.

Well, again, I'll say... depends on what you're trying to write. 
 :)

True, large projects need rigorous standards.

I'm an EE, so my biases are going to be a certain way.  In fact, 
I try to bring that need for structure and formalism to things that 
are typically thought of as unimportant for having them, e.g. GUI 
code.

I'm all for formalism. Rebol allows many gradations from extremely 
free, to quite strict (if you're prepared to write some support functions 
like Ladislav).

I worry, for instance, about the semantics of if your app starts 
drawing on MOUSE_DOWN and then keeps processing MOUSE_MOVE as if 
you are drawing until you get a MOUSE_UP... but then your app loses 
focus while the mouse is down (for instance, due to a window popping 
up or maybe the user hit alt-tab).  So the app gets lost, or information 
gets lost, or whatever

Which is great for high-speed prototyping.

Yes, high-speed prototyping does seem to be REBOL's area.  I've tried 
Awk and PHP and Perl and such and thought they were all terrible.

Yes, that's very interesting, and I'm going to have to spend some 
more time thinking about it.

If you mean the mouse thing, I have a blog article / screencast about 
it

http://hostilefork.com/2007/11/25/lost-focus-placeholder/

Although I had noticed apps misbehaving on refocusing, I hadn't really 
thought much about it.

I guess my attitude was to just get the thing working first, and 
worry about these sorts of edge cases later.

That placeholder concept is cool. I wonder if it shouldn't be integrated 
into the OS ?

I like this quote: "Some facets of usability (
such as cancellation, 
undo, progress bars, and others) 
require software architecture support 
 .
Because they reach so deeply into the architecture of a system,
these 
facets must be built into the system from its inception 
rather than 
added after an initial system design
and user interface has been 
achieved."

Glad you like it... I just think it would be nice to see more things 
like that.  I don't know that I think this particular issue is super 
high priority, it just represents a more rigorous way of thinking 
about such problems.  My article on undo/redo tied to single user 
events is actually probably something I care more about, but it's 
another thing that people don't take as seriously as I... http://hostilefork.com/2007/11/25/undo-single-user-event/

No, it's excellent work. Advance the standard of modern applications.

Thanks again.  Well, I decided the best thing I could do was to show 
the ideas as I haven't really been writing software for a few years

It's all part of "The Great Plan" to clarify each concept in computing 
:)

Well, back to REBOL/Core :) I do feel that it's nice to find ways 
in which it can be applied more formally.  Maybe you can't validate 
the *process* by which a REBOL program achieves a result, but you 
can validate the *product* of its processes and check them for validity. 
 I think I would consider it that way, in that I would write tools 
to do all kinds of massive things in REBOL but then very carefully 
write an output-checker in another language.

Ok, gnite, and thank you for all your help.  I've updated the code 
and still appreciate suggestions: http://pastebin.com/m1f01d32a

Fork, it's tiny issues, but you might wanna do this:
In the set-value and switch functions, you have
... none = find ...
In the case of checking for none, you might wanna do:
if none? find ...

One of the really great things with REBOL, is that you can write 
stuff really short. Your get-value function is defined as:
get-value: function [] [] [v]
I would write:
get-value: does [v]

Parenthesis are good for readability, but you should know, that they're 
not necessary in many cases.
repeat index (length? cases) [
can be written:
repeat index length? cases [

Again it's a tiny issue, but it's good to know, if you wanna become 
a shark in REBOL coding.

It's good work, you've pulled! And a fine idea with an enum! type 
implemented as an object. A good way to get a feeling about context 
and functions in REBOL.

You talked about locals. If you have a function with locals and no 
parameters, you can also use HAS:
f: has [v] [v: 1 + 2]

sometimes you don't even need to check for none, as find returns 
none, if nothing is found:

if find ...

On parens, the reverse is true as well. Sometimes you need them in 
REBOL, where you wouldn't in other langs, because ops take precedence 
over funcs and math is strictly L->R.

As one who has been pushing for better PitL tools for REBOL, I hear 
you Fork. When I found REBOL, a lot of the initial things I did were 
to replace stuff from lanugages I was used to, that were "missing" 
in REBOL. There are still holes, and each of us will have different 
ones, but I eventually found that REBOL's way is not bad or wrong, 
just different. It takes a very different mindset to work effectively 
in REBOL. And use can use its power and flexibility to create a mess 
as easily (or more) as to create a beautiful and elegant solution.