I've been pondering shorthands, and I think I'm near-100% certain that ? is good shorthand for OPT(IONAL).
Following on that, I'm coming to wonder if ! is a good shorthand for TRY (and that ?! is might be a good shorthand for OPT TRY). But ?? could also be OPT TRY as "more forceful OPT"... especially since there's OPT:VETO which is competing here and needs something.
The idea of !! meaning "Propagate Error" is intriguing. It's probably a behavior-modifying refinement to TRY or TRAP, e.g. something like TRY:PROPAGATE.
Anyway this all led me to question != being an alias for not equal, and if we should just stick with <>. != could be some kind of "try equal?" or such, that would make more sense.
But in thinking about how characters compose onto equal signs to affect their behavior, that made me wonder...
What Could >>= Do ?
A good question for @bradrn ... is there anything meaningfully relatable to Haskell's iconic definition of this, which is applicable in the Ren-C world?
Rebol has dialects... not monads.. but there's some similarity in terms of finding yourself "wrapped up" in a context with implicit assumptions.
So if you look at something like this EVAL-fence! in PARSE, what might it make you think about applying that? What kind of scenarios?
Uses of FENCE! In Dialecting - #5
e.g. "In what way would that example bend in order to show a usage of >>= that made sense?"
(Also, more generally, I'm curious if you had any additional observations after some time of having absorbed the design... on posts like asking "how are dialects implemented?" or "fundamental distinguishing features of Rebol". It's extremely useful if you add feedback on these over time, and what sorts of "marketing" points stand out most...what examples led to the best realizations.)