Map API VAG/2008-01-22

Transcript of our first public Map API meeting, held in Beaumont on 22nd of January 2008.
* [9:30] Yoz Linden: Hi everyone, welcome to the first SL WebMap API meeting!
* [9:31] Ina Centaur: !!
* [9:31] Gulliver Linden: What Yoz and I were just discussing is... we would like to solicit ideas around what map-related functions we should expose as APIs.
* [9:31] Yoz Linden: As I mentioned in the SLDev mail, this is about both the exposed web services and the client-side Javascript library.
* [9:31] Gulliver Linden: with an emphasis on the things which are most broadly useful, and those which we can deliver most quickly.
* [9:31] Anya Ristow: I'd like the same avatar stacks info I get from the inworld map
* [9:32] SignpostMarv Martin: aand there we go again
* [9:32] Anya Ristow: Better yet if it'd also include z-coord
* [9:32] Gulliver Linden: so get the xyz of all avatars on a particular regions, at a particular time?
* [9:32] Tree Kyomoon: would be nice if we could just define it ourselves, and you could just block certain ones based on security.
* [9:32] Anya Ristow: I guess z-coord wouldn't work with stacks, though.
* [9:33] Ina Centaur: @ gulliver - how real time would that be?
* [9:33] Anya Ristow: I have a bot that collects this data every siz minutes for a list of regions.
* [9:33] Gulliver Linden: Ina: we will have to do some caching, which means some staleness, but a goal is to always try and minimize that.
* [9:33] Donovan Linden: I think it we put squid in front of it we could collect that information right from the simulator
* [9:34] Donovan Linden: s/it/if/
* [9:34] Tree Kyomoon: would this work in a similar way to the XML RPC?
* [9:34] Gulliver Linden: Tree: what is "it" just then?
* [9:34] Ina Centaur: this is probably a rhetorical question: would this mapapi tech be more efficient than a well written libsl bot (that uses only the resources it needs for this map app)?
* [9:35] SignpostMarv Martin: a mapapi is only concerned with map data
* [9:35] Saijanai Kuhn: not all bots have universal permission...
* [9:35] SignpostMarv Martin: libSL is concerned with a hell of a lot more
* [9:36] Anya Ristow: There are three levels of detail available for avatar info, as far as I know. The map stacks are the most coarse and don't include z-coord. The minimap info is good to +/- 1m XY and +/- 4m Z. Then there's the in-draw-range info that is much more precise.
* [9:36] Ina Centaur: right, but i'm saying that your default viewer takes way too many sim resources (and is bw heavy). if you have a well-written bot that only accesses map features, can it be more efficient than the proposed mapapi
* [9:36] Gulliver Linden: Tree: most likely, we will not use XML-RPC per se. but the apis would accept and return LLSD generally, and other datatypes when it made sense.
* [9:36] Saijanai Kuhn: Dale Glass once sent abot around mapping all regions. Took several wekks I think
* [9:36] Tree Kyomoon: Gulliver, "it" is all the features of the Map in world with their current in client calls, simply exposed and communicable as XML expressions. So if one is getAvatarCoords in world, we could communicate with the API by sending valid args <arg><method="getAvatarCoords" args="regionName"/></arg> etc
* [9:37] Yoz Linden: Ina: It might not be quite as live as the data a bot would get, but much easier to run.
* [9:37] Gulliver Linden: i take it an easy way to get bulk data quickly is very desirable...
* [9:37] Ina Centaur: @gulliver, well if you want a user's xyz to be accurate, real time (or close to it) is generally desireable. people tend to run all over the place ;-)
* [9:38] Anya Ristow: I was thinking a web process would be much less intensive. The sim sends data to clients whether they want it or not. Changing that'd be even better than a webmap API, for the purpose of gathering map data.
* [9:38] Gulliver Linden: unless they are camping. ;)
* [9:38] Ina Centaur: @yoz... i would have assumed LL had better solutions than bots ;-)
* [9:38] Tree Kyomoon: if it has to stage through multiple filewalls like XML RPC does, "realtime" would be unlikely
* [9:38] Ina Centaur: yay, we can use mapapi to stalk out the exact positions of the campers (urm.. or idlers... or the bunch of us sitting around at this meeting!)
* [9:39] Anya Ristow: My bot currently gathers data from about 100 sims, and that'll probably double quickly. Can't visit that many that quickly, and people get concerned when bots pop in and out
* [9:39] Dr Scofield: anya, make them small? ;-)
* [9:39] SignpostMarv Martin: I'm not sure if the mapapi *should* return avatar positions, at least not without "logging in"
* [9:39] Gigs Taggart: I would definitely like at least the stacks info
* [9:40] Ina Centaur: @marv... yes, recall the drama over the old SLstats.com ...
* [9:40] Anya Ristow: Dr, I considered that. Small, invisible, and underground :-)
* [9:40] Dr Scofield: underground..hadn't thought about that. good idea
* [9:40] Yoz Linden: SignpostMarv: What potential problems are you thinking of?
* [9:40] Dr Scofield: rat bots
* [9:40] Gulliver Linden: other than avatar positions, regions xy, bulk data...
* [9:40] Anya Ristow: Yes, I was thinking the stacks info would be do-able in realtime.
* [9:40] Gulliver Linden: tile images,
* [9:41] SignpostMarv Martin: since the avatar data wouldn't display names of people,
* [9:41] Gulliver Linden: are there other things you guys would like to see?
* [9:41] SignpostMarv Martin: the only problem would be a griefer bot that sneaks out the most densely populated regions and makes them go poof
* [9:41] SignpostMarv Martin: or marketing spammers
* [9:41] Anya Ristow: Right, there are no names on the stacks info or even the minimap info, so I wouldn't think there'd be privacy issues
* [9:41] Zha Ewry: The spammers, strikes me as more likely
* [9:42] Yoz Linden: SignpostMarv: True, but enforcing login isn't much of a barrier there
* [9:42] Gulliver Linden: Marv: we could front "dangerous" APIs with caps, and control who has access to them.
* [9:42] Zha Ewry: and. I don't see that you can avoid it by usinfg login
* [9:42] Anya Ristow: A griefer bot could already do that with existing map info
* [9:42] Gulliver Linden: if that turns out to be necessary.
* [9:42] Zha Ewry: As with 90% of griefer measures, anyone willing to write a client bot, will be able to sneak past most of them
* [9:42] SignpostMarv Martin: the benefits to publishing avatar distribution data is people would be able to more easily create mashup applications to display popular regions
* [9:42] Gulliver Linden: making regions more resistent to "poofing", is of course, another project... :)
* [9:43] Ina Centaur: yes, it would be helpful if mapapi can detect the downtime of a region
* [9:43] Yoz Linden: Ina: Do you mean the current status?
* [9:43] Ina Centaur: yes
* [9:43] SignpostMarv Martin: if a 3rd party application is aware of the logged in Resident's position in SL, and there is a dot on the map at their location, the 3rd party app could say "dude, that's you"
* [9:43] Ina Centaur: possibly also data from ctrl shift 1
* [9:43] Zha Ewry: Ooh. At that point, a whole binch of nice extrinsics come to mind
* [9:44] Zha Ewry: Havok Version, Mono, etc
* [9:44] Zha Ewry: Possibly underling build of the sim
* [9:44] Dr Scofield: sim owner
* [9:44] Dr Scofield: LL grid, OpenSim grid
* [9:44] Gigs Taggart: maybe it's not appropriate to call this a map API then
* [9:44] Zha Ewry: Bunch fof that is probably under "caps" for the sims, tho
* [9:44] Gigs Taggart: sim information API?
* [9:44] Ina Centaur: lol
* [9:44] Tree Kyomoon: would be cool if owners of sims could get much more detailed info on their own sims
* [9:45] Gulliver Linden: Gigs, Tree: true, true.
* [9:45] Dr Scofield: it's a web 3.0 map
* [9:45] Zha Ewry: Yes and no, Tree, I kind of like not knowing *too* much ;-)
* [9:45] Tree Kyomoon: then I might be able to start making some money with my sim
* [9:45] Tree Kyomoon: :)
* [9:45] Yoz Linden: Let's focus a bit more on the geographical side for a moment...
* [9:45] Ina Centaur: i think uptime is the major thing though. no point loading up SL if you're on-the-go if the event you want to drop in on is in a dead region
* [9:45] Gigs Taggart: Guilliver in terms of implmentation is all this data coming from centralized stuff? Might it make more sense to have a very simple map API, and then let the region itself provide the rest of the info?
* [9:46] Yoz Linden: Are there particular spatial queries that people really need right now?
* [9:46] SignpostMarv Martin: Tree: see 
* [9:46] Dahlia Trimble: a list of accessable sims and theur locations would be useful
* [9:47] Gulliver Linden: Gigs: we are trying to do away with centralized things... so as much as possible, we would pull from sims directly, or partitioned DBs
* [9:47] Ina Centaur: yes, btw how *many* sims are there? marv's screenscraping of world.sl.com tells me there are around 15k
* [9:47] Zha Ewry: Right, and that becomes even more likely in Open Grids
* [9:47] Yoz Linden: Ina: A little more, but yes
* [9:47] Zha Ewry: Centralized services are costly, and unless they are required to allow you to see the data..
* [9:47] Gigs Taggart: yeah, well I heard someone mention caching and less-than-live data, I don't see why that would be necessary if the centralized part was only a "directory of sims"
* [9:47] Zha Ewry: they scale badly, and all
* [9:48] Saijanai Kuhn: the current mapdrawing code doesn't use video cards. Zero told us its the most CPU-intesive code in SL
* [9:48] Ina Centaur: that means that at max capacity, sl can handle only 15k * 100 avatars... what happens if all 12 million users sign on ;-P
* [9:48] Zha Ewry: Well, first ina, most people can't login more than 1 or 2 alts at a time, so only 3-04 millin ;-)
* [9:48] Brandi Lane: laughs
* [9:48] Ina Centaur: lol
* [9:48] Gulliver Linden: Ina: we have not planned for that event. ;)
* [9:49] Zha Ewry: And. second how manyof those people, actually can find thier passwords
* [9:49] Ina Centaur: ^.~
* [9:49] Dahlia Trimble: also if a position in a sim is able to be teleported to. Sometimes going to the center of the sim ans the curent login defaults to puts you into someone's protected land
* [9:49] Zha Ewry: That's a good point Dahlia
* [9:49] Worsethe Dayafter: agreed
* [9:49] Ina Centaur: true, you'd just be shifted/kicked off to the next parcel though
* [9:49] Donovan Linden: I think there is a large amount of llsd data available from the sim process itself. I think with appropriate caching and limiting, we could just open access to these services, which are distributed in the same way sims are
* [9:49] Zha Ewry: telehbs, routing, etc
* [9:50] Dahlia Trimble: or teleported home
* [9:50] Gulliver Linden: marv: good ideas in that doc.
* [9:50] Ina Centaur: but i think the old mapapi routed directly to secondlife:// so you actually arrive at the right x,y,z?
* [9:50] Donovan Linden: but for global services like finding the x/y of a region, or whether a region is up or down, we'll need to do a different design
* [9:50] Gulliver Linden: agrees with Donovan
* [9:50] SignpostMarv Martin: generating Map.LLSD document
* [9:50] Zha Ewry: and. Yes, I think that facading, or handing caps down to the sim itself is the way to do most details
* [9:51] Zha Ewry: And. Yes, a global service to do the first layer of discovery
* [9:51] Gigs Taggart: For me a centralized API would only need to do a few things, IP<->Sim Name, World Coords<->SimName, and a method to get a list of sims... everything else the sim could do.
* [9:51] Zha Ewry: nods
* [9:51] Donovan Linden: yeah zha. it's a lot easier to cache than the existing message system, and a lot easier to script than the existring message system.
* [9:51] Zha Ewry: You *might* want a lightweifht skinned facade for people who aren't logged in, but I'm not sure I buy that
* [9:51] Ina Centaur: yes, knowing which server the sim is on is also useful
* [9:52] Zha Ewry: *lightweight
* [9:52] Ina Centaur: but, ip <-> sim name might not be 1:1 ... especially if the sim crashes in the interval of interest
* [9:52] Ina Centaur: and gets relocated to another server o.O
* [9:52] SignpostMarv Martin: has everyone looked my the documentation for my mapapi btw ?
* [9:52] Ina Centaur: so, again, the real time/speed issue is important
* [9:52] Saijanai Kuhn: Zha, at theleast, the tiled maps you can get currently via the web
* [9:52] Zha Ewry: The facade would be *almost* a 503 (redirect)
* [9:52] Gigs Taggart: Ina, not a big deal, when we contacted the server it could tell us that it no longer had that sim :P
* [9:53] Saijanai Kuhn: Singpost did you ever put a url to it in the VAG page?
* [9:53] Zha Ewry: Well, no gigs, most likely it will no respond, as it's crashed :-(
* [9:53] Gigs Taggart: Zha the servers rarely crash, the sim instances do
* [9:53] Zha Ewry: Then, when it reboots, yes, it will say "Sorry, no longer handlign that sim"
* [9:53] Ina Centaur: lol
* [9:54] Zha Ewry: has spent enough time sorting out the state of large disributed Websphere deployments to know all the horrible states between "Up and Down"
* [9:54] Zha Ewry: "You can ping me, but I won't respond in any meaningful way"
* [9:54] Zha Ewry: "I will look like a perfectly normal, functioning node, until you put a request in my queue"
* [9:54] Gulliver Linden: "there is only up and not up"
* [9:54] SignpostMarv Martin: Saijanai: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Map_API_VAG
* [9:54] Gigs Taggart: I just don't see that as a big issue, all this happens everywhere on the web.
* [9:55] SignpostMarv Martin: there is up, offline, and rebooting
* [9:55] Zha Ewry: I wish Guliver
* [9:55] Zha Ewry: There *should* only be up and not up
* [9:55] Ina Centaur: (imho rebooting is offline)
* [9:55] SignpostMarv Martin: not according to the mapapi :-P
* [9:55] Ina Centaur: (ideally) there should only be up and only up ;-)
* [9:55] Zha Ewry: But. IRL.. there are all the lovely degrees of wedgitude
* [9:55] Gulliver Linden: you just have to define one state: up. other states are not-up. ;)
* [9:56] SignpostMarv Martin: the voicemap API returned rather odd results for regions that were offline- e.g. regions that showed up in the webmap API, but didn't return any info for Lindens' god tools
* [9:56] Zha Ewry: And. Yes, seriosuly, UP, is the major state, all others.. from this perspective are probably not teribly interesting
* [9:56] Zha Ewry: either I can TP or walk onto the sim, or I can't.
* [9:56] Zha Ewry: If it's rebooting.. I can'.t
* [9:57] SignpostMarv Martin: on a slight tangent, I would like to see a "rolling restart" twitter feed :-P
* [9:57] Yoz Linden: SignpostMarv: Oooh, nice idea. :)
* [9:57] Gulliver Linden: agreed. more detail is needed for some use cases, but not for others.
* [9:57] Ina Centaur: incidentally, does twitter block you if you overping them in a certain interval?
* [9:57] SignpostMarv Martin: I was using twitter to display update progress of my exhaustive grid search query
* [9:58] Frans Charming: ina, their api has limits. don't know about the web interface
* [9:58] Gulliver Linden: would / how would people make use of callbacks? i.e., register a URL with us, and we will ping it with some data, when some event happens?
* [9:58] SignpostMarv Martin: 
* [9:58] Yoz Linden: Though I imagine that that'd have too dense a flow to be useful on twitter
* [9:58] Gulliver Linden: i.e., ways to not have to poll constantly?
* [9:58] SignpostMarv Martin: Gulliver, ping would be good, yes
* [9:59] Ina Centaur: (/me teases marv. i can't wait till minnesota takes over SL ;-P)
* [9:59] Frans Charming: I think so too, Yoz
* [9:59] SignpostMarv Martin: estate managers would find that feature to be incredibly useful to monitor their regions
* [9:59] SignpostMarv Martin: wishes he could rez a stick to poke Ina
* [9:59] Anya Ristow: Gulliver, that'd be preferable to pinging the server until it has fresh data, I'd think, From both ends.
* [9:59] SignpostMarv Martin: :-P
* [10:00] Zha Ewry: Heylow, Burhop, Rob
* [10:00] Rob Linden: howdy
* [10:00] Teravus Ousley: Hello
* [10:00] Frans Charming: Hi Rob
* [10:00] Gigs Taggart: heh
* [10:00] Gigs Taggart: Rob tripped on a land mine
* [10:00] SignpostMarv Martin: hi Rob
* [10:00] Anya Ristow: My only concern with callbacks would be it might not be possible to group multiple datapoints into one message, so HTTP header overhead might be quite large
* [10:01] Ina Centaur: incidentally, these are all some cool ideas... but when would mapapi 2.0 (or whatever version this is) be available?
* [10:01] Mystical Demina: i got pushed lol to the next sim
* [10:01] Yoz Linden: There are no plans for a full "2.0" as such, but we do want to add services to the additional one
* [10:01] Teravus Ousley: Yes, Gennadius Gontineac
* [10:01] Yoz Linden: many of the services that we're talking about here
* [10:02] Yoz Linden: would fit into the wider context of SL web services
* [10:02] Zha Ewry: nods
* [10:02] Gulliver Linden: ina: i think we are going to try the approach or releasing individual calls as they are complete. rather than delaying until some huge package is "complete"
* [10:02] Zha Ewry: That's fine as a plan, Yoz
* [10:02] Brandi Lane: claps
* [10:02] Zha Ewry: And. Yea! Gulliver
* [10:02] Yoz Linden: After all, most of what we're talking about is region-specific rather than map-specific
* [10:02] Frans Charming: nods and smiles
* [10:02] Ina Centaur: @gulliver: cool, roughly when would the first individual calls be released?
* [10:02] Zha Ewry: Especially if they are sperable
* [10:03] Yoz Linden: The existing webmap API is using the same web services system that new calls will be implemented in
* [10:03] Yoz Linden: BTW, so we don't lose sight of it completely...
* [10:04] Yoz Linden: Jacquard Looming is here, who wrote the existing Google Maps-based client side library that the webmap uses
* [10:04] Gulliver Linden: Ina: i would want to promise a date, but releasing new services for people , map and otherwise, is a main goal for this quarter.
* [10:04] Yoz Linden: if there are any questions regarding that, now's a good time to ask them!
* [10:06] Frans Charming: did we all just stopped chatting?
* [10:06] Ina Centaur: how does the original one interface with SL on the backend?
* [10:06] Saijanai Kuhn: I hear you
* [10:06] Ice Brodie: I just got here, Frans
* [10:06] Ina Centaur: i went afk to get some chocolate
* [10:06] Gulliver Linden: noone has anything for Jacquard, it appears.
* [10:07] Yoz Linden: Apparently there are no questions about the Javascript library. :)
* [10:07] Tree Kyomoon: trying to think of a question for Jacquard!
* [10:07] SignpostMarv Martin: oookay, I have no idea how long I'm going to stay here before my computer freezes
* [10:07] SignpostMarv Martin: where were we ?
* [10:07] Ina Centaur: @jac:how does the original one interface with SL on the backend?
* [10:07] Gulliver Linden: you had just gotten grenaded...
* [10:07] Teravus Ousley: hehe
* [10:07] Anya Ristow: Is it possible to have google calendar map an SL url?
* [10:07] Yoz Linden: SignpostMarv: I was saying that now's a good time to ask questions about the Javascript map implementation
* [10:07] SignpostMarv Martin: hehe
* [10:08] SignpostMarv Martin: Is anyone not familiar with my thoughts on the subject ?
* [10:08] Ice Brodie: I have one about the the library, is there a way to identify region coordinates <-> names links?
* [10:08] SignpostMarv Martin: :-3
* [10:08] Teravus Ousley: alas , green dots attract other green dots (grenades)
* [10:08] Gulliver Linden: anya: i think that gets into the idea of creating a feed of event data.
* [10:08] Yoz Linden: Ina: The map uses existing web services to get region info
* [10:08] Gulliver Linden: which is something we would like to do.
* [10:08] SignpostMarv Martin: 1) Why is the map api composed of 4 seperate javascript files
* [10:08] Yoz Linden: and builds URLs to fetch tile images.
* [10:09] Gulliver Linden: Ic... what do you mean exactly?
* [10:09] Gulliver Linden: s/Ic/Ice/
* [10:09] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
* [10:09] Ice Brodie: I have a system that maps SL's region positions, it's easiest if I'm able to get it through systems independant of a region itself.
* [10:10] Jacquard Looming: I'm only aware of 2 JS files (the SL Map API, and Google Maps), but it's possible Linden added some extra stuff onto it that I haven't seen
* [10:11] Jacquard Looming: or perhaps split it up
* [10:11] Gulliver Linden: Ice... that is that kind of data we will be making available, most likely in bulk and non-bulk fashion.
* [10:11] Ice Brodie: yay bulk, that's exactly the sort of output I nee
* [10:11] Ice Brodie: s/nee/need
* [10:11] Teravus Ousley: Greetings Rex
* [10:11] Saijanai Kuhn: could the sim owner optionally supply a sentence describing his/her/its region?
* [10:11] Tree Kyomoon: /sorry I was crashy there, was there a response ever about making some API calls more detailed if they are called by the sim owner?
* [10:12] Yoz Linden: Ice: The webmap API has URLs that let you do region name <-> coordinate mapping
* [10:12] Yoz Linden: and also blocks of neighbouring regions
* [10:12] Rex Cronon: hi, u not the only one that crashes:(
* [10:12] Gulliver Linden: before you arrived, i also mentioned we may try to support callbacks. i.e, register with a sim a URL that you want it to ping with certain events happen.
* [10:12] SignpostMarv Martin: and that was SL freezing my system
* [10:12] Saijanai Kuhn: 512 UTF-8 chars limit
* [10:12] SignpostMarv Martin: as I was saying,
* [10:12] Ice Brodie: Yoz: URL?
* [10:12] Anya Ristow: A parcel-level comment would be nice; perhaps just a list of parcel names and descriptions.
* [10:12] Teravus Ousley: Thats a cool idea
* [10:12] SignpostMarv Martin: 1) why is the client made up of 4 different javascript files
* [10:13] Tree Kyomoon: yes. would be cool if region owners could get a special "sim url" that only they knew
* [10:13] SignpostMarv Martin: 2) why do developers who work with the API have to create an account with google, but not with Linden Lab
* [10:13] Tree Kyomoon: and could use that to access more detail
* [10:13] Gulliver Linden: Tree: didn't see that question, but yes. i think some APIs will be public and well known, others will be fronted by caps and given out in a controled manner. say to sim owners.
* [10:13] SignpostMarv Martin: 3) Why does the server-side consist of 2 calls (3 if you count the voice map)
* [10:13] SignpostMarv Martin: 4) Why is the server-side unreliable ?
* [10:14] Saijanai Kuhn: sets aside a few yeras for the answer to #4
* [10:14] Jacquard Looming: Re: #1 - I already answered that from my perspective, I think
* [10:14] Ina Centaur: 5) can we get marv to 1-man code mapapi 2.0 (or whatever version this is)
* [10:14] SignpostMarv Martin: heh, yeah, hire me and I'll make everything fixxorz :-3
* [10:14] Jacquard Looming: Re: #2 because that is the only way to get a Google Maps API key, and the SL JS Map API uses Google Maps for the backend
* [10:14] SignpostMarv Martin: j/k :-P
* [10:14] SignpostMarv Martin: Jacquard: it was a rhetorical question
* [10:15] SignpostMarv Martin: it seems odd that you'd have to create an account with google to use an api not hosted by google for a service not ran by google
* [10:15] Yoz Linden: 2) At the time we rewrote the Javascript map, GMaps was the best choice for documentation and browser compatibility
* [10:15] Jacquard Looming: are any of your questions non-rhetorical?
* [10:15] Gulliver Linden: marv: please use the <rhetorical /> tag.
* [10:15] Ina Centaur: cheers... a new tag is born!
* [10:15] Ice Brodie: signpost, they use the Google API itself, so it's not LL's code that requires the key
* [10:15] Gulliver Linden: quick, someone blog it!
* [10:15] Lom Hax: <blinks/>
* [10:15] SignpostMarv Martin: question 3 & 4 isn't rhetorical
* [10:16] Yoz Linden: 3) Because that's all we need?
* [10:16] Yoz Linden: for the moment, I mean.
* [10:16] SignpostMarv Martin: Yoz: have you looked at my calls ?
* [10:16] Ina Centaur: 5 isn't either ;-P
* [10:16] Ina Centaur: (and omg. how dare you! i am *not* marv's bot!)
* [10:17] Gulliver Linden: if i remember correctly, the stuff Jacquard built was, specifically, a way to use Google Maps to display our tile data, etc.
* [10:17] Tree Kyomoon: thanks gulliver. Love the handle by the way:)
* [10:17] Gulliver Linden: so it much less general than what we want to do next/now.
* [10:17] Ina Centaur: <travels />
* [10:18] Yoz Linden: SignpostMarv: Yes, and they look potentially useful - what I'm saying is that the existing services were created to meet the needs of our own map
* [10:18] SignpostMarv Martin: has 8 calls in his api, LL has 2, teeny rather limited
* [10:18] Burhop Piccard: Anyway to get higher resoltuion on tiles?
* [10:18] SignpostMarv Martin: *calls
* [10:18] Yoz Linden: the purpose of this meeting is to encourage discussion on what other calls would be useful to developers
* [10:18] Gulliver Linden: haha,thx tree.
* [10:18] Ina Centaur: @yoz: ok, so it's not limited to mapapi-related calls
* [10:18] Tree Kyomoon: yes, burhop...plant a bot about 60m up and take pics :)
* [10:18] Saijanai Kuhn: I asked the groupies to join because Signpost was talking about a trans-grid specification
* [10:19] Gulliver Linden: Jacquard/Yoz: do you remember if the google maps integration uses the highest resolution tiles?
* [10:19] SignpostMarv Martin: LL's server API only returns results for one region at a time
* [10:19] SignpostMarv Martin: before someone poked the voicemap API in my direction, to do a complete scan of the grid would've taken 3 weeks
* [10:19] Anya Ristow: It looks like the google map uses the 256x256 tiles.
* [10:19] Jacquard Looming: I believe it does use the highest res possible (but don't quote me)
* [10:19] Saijanai Kuhn: Joe's Garage needs to be included in some way, but how?
* [10:19] Ina Centaur: yes voiceapi would be very useful!
* [10:19] Emma Nowhere: Yoz, I use the map api to get textures for my products and a number of sims are not in the web map that are in the viewer map
* [10:20] SignpostMarv Martin: my initial scan of the grid that searched within the results found via the eventful.com API and scraping the google appliance took 5 days to complete
* [10:20] Burhop Piccard: I'm mapping avatar paths to tiles.. 256x256 can get cluttered :-(
* [10:20] Ina Centaur: (and is it made a standalone program to avoid the gpl-ness of the viewer?)
* [10:20] Ina Centaur: hmm voiceAPI could be called voiAPI to go with the tla's...
* [10:20] SignpostMarv Martin: this is one of the reasons the adoption of a Map.llsd -type monolithic data source should be provided,
* [10:21] SignpostMarv Martin: to prevent developers having to either use libSL, or exhaustively scan the entire grid one cell at a time
* [10:21] Yoz Linden: Ina: the voice API is currently provided by a third party and is proprietary.
* [10:21] Gulliver Linden: marv: do you have a list somewhere of what data you have scraped and what you did with it?
* [10:22] SignpostMarv Martin: I emailed yoz a copy of the file I came up with after combining the voice map api for exhaustive search with the webmap api for validation search
* [10:22] Gulliver Linden: Burhop: my first thought it that offering higher resolution than we do right now, in in the category of "harder" things to do. but I will discuss it with some other people.
* [10:22] SignpostMarv Martin: as for what I'm doing with the data,
* [10:23] SignpostMarv Martin: 
* [10:23] SignpostMarv Martin: there's also :-P
* [10:23] Ina Centaur: mod_rewrite needs key2name
* [10:24] SignpostMarv Martin: it does
* [10:24] SignpostMarv Martin: downloads the map.llsd file for
* [10:24] Zha Ewry: Fro all of this, it would be clever, if we assume that the same pattern, is usable cross grid as well
* [10:25] Zha Ewry: Or at least concvince ourslves it will be
* [10:25] Saijanai Kuhn: *should* be useable cross-grid...
* [10:25] Burhop Piccard: FYI, here is what my bitmap look like now at Maximum resolution. Sure would like to be able to zoom in closer.
* [10:25] Emma Nowhere: is there a reason why the web map doesn't show some regions? is that something i should file in the jira?
* [10:25] Saijanai Kuhn: can Joe's Garage participate/contribute to this?
* [10:25] Saijanai Kuhn: and how?
* [10:25] Zha Ewry: Well, Saij.. the quuestionwould be
* [10:26] SignpostMarv Martin: Burhop: I can't see that cos I'm using SLeek
* [10:26] Zha Ewry: Do they a) implement the SIm level calls, ie, if OpenSim does
* [10:26] Zha Ewry: and b) how do they register to someone's central mapping site, so they are mappable, which is a grid operations question
* [10:26] SignpostMarv Martin: I also generated these images: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Images_of_Agni
* [10:26] Jacquard Looming: Emma: I'm not aware of any regions that shouldn't be displayed - maybe it means the web service isn't returning data for them
* [10:26] Gulliver Linden: Zha: yeah... looking forward to a multi-grid work, and multi-grid interop, we will do. but our focus will definitely be on delivering stuff that is useful right away.
* [10:26] Ina Centaur: hmmm what about moe's garage?
* [10:27] Gulliver Linden: emma -- yeah, can you jira it and send me a link?
* [10:27] Emma Nowhere: i'll file a report and include a number of image url's for coordinates that come up as blue squares
* [10:27] Yoz Linden: Emma: Yep, there are some tiles that aren't available through the web interface - this has been seen before, and I can't remember the exact problem, but we'll look into it
* [10:27] SignpostMarv Martin: Linden World doesn't show up
* [10:27] Gulliver Linden: my first guess is that tile generation is out of date or something.
* [10:27] Saijanai Kuhn: what is the url for the current Map APIs?
* [10:28] Ina Centaur: lindenworld could be the next disneyworld...
* [10:28] SignpostMarv Martin: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Webmap_API
* [10:28] Emma Nowhere: thats what i thought too, but it seems to be the ones to the far east or west, but interestingly, it's not a hard cutoff in the x direction, it's sort of random
* [10:28] Ice Brodie: is there a way to provide data from a region itself? say if I go to a web page on sim4112.agni.lindenlab.com (this region) I'd be able to see the F1 stats for server, time dialation, FPS, Agent data, objects, and other aspects?
* [10:28] SignpostMarv Martin: vs https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:SignpostMarv_Martin/Webmap_API :-P
* [10:28] Burhop Piccard: Signpost, I've dropped you a bitmap... you can pick it up next time you can.
* [10:28] Saijanai Kuhn: thanks
* [10:28] Anya Ristow: Sometimes map requests just don't come back. Perhaps whatever's serving them doesn't retry?
* [10:28] Gulliver Linden: i'm going to have to go around 10:30 or so....
* [10:28] Yoz Linden: Ice: We're looking at providing some of that in the future
* [10:29] Gulliver Linden: Ice: that was suggested earlier, so i have added that to the list.
* [10:29] Gulliver Linden: i think its a good idea.
* [10:29] Yoz Linden: OK, Gulliver and I need to make a move, alas
* [10:29] SignpostMarv Martin: Could we discuss the mapapi.net wiki idea- on the mailing list the last thing discussed about it was Rob mentioning licensing issues
* [10:29] Yoz Linden: but thanks to all for attending - lots of useful ideas here!
* [10:29] Worsethe Dayafter: thanks, it's been very interesting reading
* [10:29] Yoz Linden: I'll add the log to the wiki later
* [10:30] Ina Centaur: yeah there is so much discussion on scripters list now gmail is marking it as spam o.O
* [10:30] Gulliver Linden: thanks folks!
* [10:30] Yoz Linden: the main takeaway, I think, is that lots of people want direct, live region info of many kinds :)
* [10:30] Zha Ewry: Chuckle
* [10:30] Zha Ewry: That is the biggest one
* [10:30] Gulliver Linden: and ways to get bulk data quickly.
* [10:30] Zha Ewry: and.. a coherent way of getting the bulk data
* [10:30] Gulliver Linden: jinx.
* [10:30] SignpostMarv Martin: Rob was saying that an external wiki couldn't be used due to the possibility that contributors could block LL's usage of their contributions
* [10:31] Zha Ewry: This is the classic IP torpedo issue, Marvin
* [10:31] Gulliver Linden: Marv: i'm pretty dumb on the issues around that stuff, so i'm going to have to send you back to Rob.
* [10:31] Zha Ewry: I am far from a lawyer
* [10:31] Lom Hax: there's not much value in an external wiki for an outfit the size of LL
* [10:31] Gulliver Linden: alright... thanks again folks, see you around!
* [10:31] Zha Ewry: but you don't want people contribuing encumbered IP, then sueing you after you implement it for patent infringement
* [10:31] Lom Hax: it's easy enough to set up a wiki of one's own anyway