World: r3wp

You can see here the block: function

print mold get in svv/vid-styles/button 'multi
...
block: func [face blk][
        if pick blk 1 [
            face/action: func [face value] pick blk 1

            if pick blk 2 [face/alt-action: func [face value] pick blk 2]
        ]
    ]


It has all it needs to determine the context returned by VID-CONTEXT.

From the FACE argument (eg. the newly created BUTTON face), you can 
climb up to the window face, then search through its subfaces for 
one with a word VAR facet. That word should have been already bound 
by VID-CONTEXT, so that means we can pre-bind the action block to 
the context (just before the action function is created from it).

You would just need to modify the multi/block function for each of 
the styles which converts block to action functions.

why does re-entrance matter?

we don't have multitasking in R2

Actually, it looks like the multi/block function is the same for 
all styles.

If you want to port your code later, it might be significant. If 
not, don't worry.

binding control in R3 is one of my favorite things that got a major 
boost in capability.

Here's a proof of concept for that idea I mentioned:

svv/vid-styles/button/multi/block: func [face blk][ ; <- This only 
does BUTTON for now.
	if pick blk 1 [
		;face/action: func [face value] pick blk 1

  face/action: func [face value /local window word] compose/only [

   window: face/parent-face ; Find the window face <-- (simplistic for 
   now)

   word: window/pane/1/var ; Find a word which references a field in 
   the window. <-- (simplistic for now)
			print "Remake action function."

   face/action: func [face value] probe append append copy [bind-funcs] 
   to-lit-word word (pick blk 1)
			do-face face value
		]

  if pick blk 2 [face/alt-action: func [face value] pick blk 2] ; <- 
  Also need to remake alt-action similarly to action, above.
	]
]
bind-funcs: func [word] [

 foreach window-function [hello][bind second get window-function word]
]

hello: does [f/text: copy "hello" show f]

open-window: does [
	view/new center-face layout ctx: vid-context [
		f: field
		button "Hello" [hello]
		button "Clear" [clear-face f]
	]
]

open-window
open-window
do-events

That was fun to figure out, but I'm not sure it's worth all the extra 
complication yet. Would have to see if it is straightforward and 
consistent to use, or makes things too confusing to understand later. 
It would definitely need some good docs.

so when you use the action of a button, it binds the context of the 
first word in the action block to the current context

Not the first word in the action block, no.

So, what side effects are there ?

if the action is to update a different window in a different context 
.. I guess that action would stop working ....

and it doesn't solve the issue where the function you are rebinding 
actually calls a different function to update the gui

The major side-effect is that the action of each face (eg. button, 
field) will remake itself the first time it is used, to insert a 
snippet of code to rebind the window funcs before your specified 
action code uses them.

So, I suspect it is better to allow the programmer to select the 
context instead of automating it.

eg.  I had something like this 


button [ get-data ] ... and get-data called another function to update 
the GUI

binding 'get-data didn't help as the function it calls was still 
bound to global

so I like your first idea better :)

You're right about nested function calls. BIND doesn't recurse into 
words, so that the bodies of functions referenced by words are also 
bound. So that could be very damaging.

Updating a different window can still work, though, because you're 
going to need to reference that window anyway to distinguish it from 
the "current" one:

svv/vid-styles/button/multi/block: func [face blk][ ; <- This only 
does BUTTON for now.
	if pick blk 1 [
		;face/action: func [face value] pick blk 1

  face/action: func [face value /local window word] compose/only [

   window: face/parent-face ; Find the window face <-- (simplistic for 
   now)

   word: window/pane/1/var ; Find a word which references a field in 
   the window. <-- (simplistic for now)
			print "Remake action function."

   face/action: func [face value] probe append append copy [bind-funcs] 
   to-lit-word word (pick blk 1)
			do-face face value
		]

  if pick blk 2 [face/alt-action: func [face value] pick blk 2] ; <- 
  Also need to remake alt-action similarly to action, above.
	]
]
bind-funcs: func [word] [

 foreach window-function [hello][bind second get window-function word]
]

hello: does [f/text: copy "hello" show f]

open-window: has [window ctx] [
	window: view/new center-face layout vid-context/to [
		f: field
		button "Hello" [hello]
		button "Clear" [clear-face f]
		button "Clear window2's field" [clear-face window2/user-data/f]
	] 'ctx
	window/user-data: ctx
	window
]

window1: open-window
window2: open-window
do-events

neat trick .. i didn't know about user-data

No, wait a minute... that's what BIND-FUNCS is for. Currently it 
only affects HELLO, but you just need to add all the functions which 
need binding into the block:
foreach window-function [hello get-data update-gui etc.]  ...

So you can have nested function calls as deep as you like, as long 
as you specify those which need binding in BIND-FUNCS.

ok, but the other issue is that the function has to be rebound each 
time it is used

Was that what Gab was saying ..?

No, Gregg's first example suffered because it only did a BIND once, 
when the window was created. It needs to do the bind every time the 
button is pressed.

So Gregg's example would work for each window as long as that window 
was the last window opened. As soon as you opened a new window, none 
of the other windows would work properly anymore.

ah... mine bound with each button press

USER-DATA in the window faces seems unlikely to be used to me. You 
could also probably use DATA without problems as well. It depends 
on whether any other VID extensions are being used in your system, 
which could theoretically use that facet for something. Of course 
you can associate the window with it's vid-context by other means 
which doesn't touch any of the window facets at all...

Graham: when you use vid-context/to, the word you pass in is set 
to an object. the object contains all the set-words you used in the 
vid block. example:

>> lay: layout vid-context/to [f: field g: button] 'ctx
>> ? ctx
CTX is an object of value: 

   f               object!   [type offset size span pane text color 
   image effec... 

   g               object!   [type offset size span pane text color 
   image effec...

A concrete example would help me here :)

now you can pass this object to your functions so that you can use 
them with many layouts.

eg. you make c: func [obj] [obj/f/text: "something" ...]

ok, so this does involve some rewriting of functions

and I guess is not that different to passing a context to a function 
as discussed above

if you really can't touch the functions, you might as well just reuse 
the same globals, no? rebinding them is also "global" so there's 
not much difference.

what's 'vid-context/to'?

I get an error?

It's in Gabriele's utility.r library which he mentioned on Saturday.

thanks...i missed that

If I had a large numer of sorted strings, how can I most efficiently 
find the first string which partially matches my search string.  
Eg. I want search on '"find*"

A hash doens't allow me to do a wild card search

http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=like.rlets you do more 
than find/any, but you're still going to have the overhead of checking 
each string. Depending on your needs that may work, or you could 
make one big string out of them and just PARSE that.

find [ "ab" "bc" "bd" ] "b*"

looks like I should try and get a hash for each first letter, first 
and second letter etc so I can at least narrow it down to the first 
3 letters and then do search on everyone after that.

How many strings and what kind of performance do you need?