Here's a second version of this series [0]. I think I have addressed most of Austin's and Jani's comments.
I've tried to make a compromise between Jani's desire to not see any unneeded initialization and my desire to have clarity and to make defaults that define behavior explicit. I ended up only initializing the variables that define default user behavior. I hope that's ok. jamie. [0] id:"1337205359-2444-1-git-send-email-jrollins at finestructure.net"