Content Creation, Scripting User Group/Archive/2011 03 21

== List of Speakers ==
Amon Dragonash	Draconis Neurocam
flexi campfire	Haravikk Mistral
Jack Abraham 	Kaluura Boa
Kelly Linden 	Latif Khalifa
Liisa Runo 	Opensource Obscure
Scrub Kuhr 	SNIM Outlander
== Transcript ==
[09:01] Kelly Linden: Hello.
[09:02] Jack Abraham: Hey Kelly.
[09:02] <nolink>!< Sofa</nolink>: Click the seat to change your animation or position.
[09:03] Haravikk Mistral: Hi Kelly
[09:04] Kelly Linden: How is everyone doing?
[09:04] Jack Abraham: Not bad.
[09:05] Draconis Neurocam: doing pretty good, yourself?
[09:05] Liisa Runo is doing good
[09:05] Kelly Linden: Doing all right.
[09:05] Kelly Linden: If I recall correctly today is a triage day.
[09:05] Kelly Linden: First, what little news I have.
[09:06] Kelly Linden: Mesh on aditi picked up the 'mono 2 aware' changes late last week. As soon as internal QA gives it another once over we should get the 'mono 2 performance' branch up on aditi this week.
[09:06] Draconis Neurocam: woo!
[09:06] Jack Abraham: Huzzah!
[09:06] Scrub Kuhr: wee
[09:06] Kelly Linden: will try to get it on a lot of regions and let it bake for a few weeks before pushing it through RC.
[09:07] Kelly Linden: Try and give it a good test once it is up on aditi though, please.
[09:07] Draconis Neurocam nods, "if aditi ever lets me sign on on the weekends"
[09:08] Kelly Linden: hunh, I wonder why it won't
[09:08] Kelly Linden: Have you asked oskar about that?
[09:08] Draconis Neurocam: no i will though
[09:09] Draconis Neurocam: i deliberatly wanted to try to break raycasting to prove falcon wrong
[09:09] Draconis Neurocam: but no luck
[09:09] Draconis Neurocam: ill tell oskar
[09:09] Kelly Linden: doh.
[09:09] Kaluura Boa: When will meshes arrive on main grid? They are like a dam holding a flood of good things behind them
[09:09] Kelly Linden: There is still a lot of work to do for meshes.
[09:09] Draconis Neurocam: kaluura theres a mesh meeting in two hours
[09:09] Draconis Neurocam: on aditi
[09:10] Kaluura Boa: I'm starting to hate meshes...
[09:10] Kelly Linden: but they aren't holding up mono 2 work anymore.
[09:10] Kelly Linden: :)
[09:10] Draconis Neurocam: kelly, any luck with amanda on the table
[09:10] Draconis Neurocam: for user groups
[09:11] Kelly Linden: Last week I got slammed with some firefighting work and didn't get a chance to make progress on that.
[09:11] Draconis Neurocam: ah alright
[09:12] Kelly Linden: Right now andrew's user group includes scripting, so for the time being I may just become a subsidiary of that user group and have andrew make a meeting time for this hour in his group's name.
[09:12] Kelly Linden: That is what I meant to get done last week, but when I was firefighting so was he. :)
[09:12] Draconis Neurocam nods
[09:13] Liisa Runo: ... would been cool to have group hour dedicated to scriptings
[09:13] Kelly Linden: All right, any general questions?
[09:14] Kelly Linden: Ok then.
[09:14] Kelly Linden: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Kelly_Linden/script_jira_triage
[09:14] Haravikk Mistral: So what kind of stuff will Andrew's group pick up scripting wise? Any idea how things like that will work, scripting issues are getting a bit neglected...
[09:14] Liisa Runo: Will you concider starting official scripting hours later when you get to work on improving the script stuff?
[09:14] Kelly Linden: Nothing would change, really. Scripting work is still back-burner right now.
[09:15] Kelly Linden: I'd like this hour to be official.
[09:15] Kelly Linden: And ongoing so I'm not starting from scratch when we do get scripting brought back to the front.
[09:15] Kelly Linden: Also, I think the triages are still useful. However I am open to input on making these meetings more valuable to you.
[09:16] Kaluura Boa: Put it into the UG calendar, that's official enough for us...
[09:16] Kelly Linden: Right.
[09:16] Haravikk Mistral: It'd be nice if even though no scripting work is really being done if things were at least being added to some kind of backlog like Snowstorm uses, as really most of the time is spent being told "not right now" on most issues
[09:17] Haravikk Mistral: Then a lot of scripting issues with viewer-side components never see any activity either, as no-one knows that the server-side will ever get done so there's not much point investing time doing the viewer stuff, even ithough it's the open-source stuff that others can work on
[09:17] Kelly Linden: Haravikk, that is a good point. I will look into getting a visible backlog.
[09:17] Kelly Linden: we have an internal backlog, but that doesn't help you.
[09:18] Haravikk Mistral: Ah, well more transparency would be great in that case, so good luck setting that up =)
[09:19] Jack Abraham: On the transparency topic, office hour transcripts would help out those of us for whom this is the middle of the RL work day; we'd at least know what's being discussed.
[09:19] Haravikk Mistral: Other than that I have another JIRA issue I'd like to ask about once others are looked at on the triage list, otherwise I'll just add it for later if we run out of time
[09:19] Kelly Linden: yeah I have those saved up I just need to post them
[09:20] Jack Abraham: Cool; thanks.
[09:21] Kelly Linden: All right.
[09:21] Amon Dragonash: The twitter message i saw about this meeting didn't really say what subject we would hear or speak about. What aspects of scripting..
[09:21] Amon Dragonash: sorry for my late showup btw
[09:21] Kelly Linden: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Kelly_Linden/script_jira_triage
[09:22] Kelly Linden: gonna start at the new features there. We skpped SVC-6300 last time because Haravikk wasn't here.
[09:22] flexi campfire: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6300
[#SVC-6300] llStartAnimationSynced() - start an animation synchronised with a given timestamp
[09:22] Kelly Linden: Hi Haravikk. :)
[09:22] Haravikk Mistral: Ah I think we went over that a couple weeks ago, just needs marked acknowledged maybe?
[09:22] Kelly Linden: ok
[09:23] Kelly Linden: Done.
[09:23] Haravikk Mistral: Though feel free to divert 10 or so Lindens to working on it if possible ;)
[09:23] Amon Dragonash: Aw integer to hex would be nice :p
[09:23] Kelly Linden: heheh of course. I wish I had 10 developers to devote to anything.
[09:23] Kelly Linden: SVC-6539
[09:23] flexi campfire: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6539
[#SVC-6539] Constants-based text-entry for llDialog
[09:24] Kaluura Boa: My feeling: No can do... alas...
[09:24] Haravikk Mistral: Ah hehe, I think I may have entered most of the current triage list =)
[09:24] Jack Abraham: Looks that way. : )
[09:24] Haravikk Mistral: Basically it's to allow a more modular dialogue once llTextBox() is done, so you can mix and match input and buttons
[09:24] Kelly Linden: once we get to that level .... why not use html?
[09:25] Kaluura Boa: Would be cool! Ho yeah!
[09:25] Haravikk Mistral: HTML has an awful lot of overhead for LSL scripts to work with
[09:25] Haravikk Mistral: Would be nice, I think I did post another issue a while back for XML control of SL GUI elements, which would be a little more streamlined though still heavier than a simplified dialogue function
[09:26] Jack Abraham: Plus if you're talking about using the prim as a web server, Kelly, you're going to set of the media filter each time (on those viewers that have it), raising trust issues.
[09:26] Draconis Neurocam: plus theres still that 2048 byte limit on httprequest, though im not even sure if that would factor in the the implimentation being discussed
[09:26] Kelly Linden: I don't follow Jack.
[09:27] Draconis Neurocam: because of redzone, lots of third party viewers have implimented a blacklist functionality on any webtraffic to and from the viewer
[09:27] Kelly Linden: We came up with quite a few tricks for showing a form straight from LSL, including getting around the 2k limit.
[09:27] Jack Abraham: If I access media-on-a-prim on Dolphin 2 (which I'm using now), I'm prompted to whitelist, blacklist, allow or deny the sim as a media stream to connect to.
[09:27] Kelly Linden: Well, seems those could whitelist traffic to LL servers.
[09:27] Jack Abraham: My understanding is that Oz is considering importing the same functionality to the LL viewer.
[09:28] Kelly Linden: you don't need a 3rd party server to do basic forms to LSL
[09:28] Jack Abraham: Could, but they'd then be vulnerable to redirects... a 3rd party server would actually raise fewer trust issues.
[09:28] Kaluura Boa: You can even do MoaP without external server.
[09:28] Jack Abraham: But the internal server still triggers the white/black list, Kaluura... any URL does.
[09:29] Kaluura Boa: If I remember correctly, writting text on prim with MoaP does't use an URL
[09:29] Draconis Neurocam: people are too paranoid in my opinion, which i know is not everyone elses
[09:29] Kelly Linden: I honestly don't know how they have their whitelist/blacklists working so can't comment on that.
[09:30] Jack Abraham: By host name, Kelly.
[09:30] SNIM Outlander: draconis, I agree.
[09:30] Kelly Linden: I assumed that much, jack. I'm just saying this isn't a topic I can really discuss with any authority.
[09:30] Haravikk Mistral: Getting a little off at a tangent maybe? Basically while HTML would certainly give the most control, more control of the existing dialogue system would be good too, and suit most simple use-cases better anyway
[09:30] Kelly Linden: And seems kind of orthogonal. Maybe you won't trust the media on your hud? I dunno.
[09:31] Jack Abraham: GIven the choice of the two methods, I'd go with Haravikk's both for overhead and security.
[09:31] Kaluura Boa: Gory details:
 llSetPrimMediaParams(4, [PRIM_MEDIA_CURRENT_URL,
 "data:text/html, " + (string)llGetUnixTime() + ""]);
That's the kind of HTML we'd need on dialogs
[09:31] Kelly Linden: I don't think we can easily extend the existing dialog function.
[09:32] Draconis Neurocam: cept align center isnt standards compliant nor has been with any of the latest versions of html
[09:32] Haravikk Mistral: Dialogues currently fail if sent any data other than strings, so insert integer constants is actually fairly easy
[09:32] Kaluura Boa: It works... It's all that matters.
[09:33] Draconis Neurocam: you would need css to do it correctly, i think
[09:33] Haravikk Mistral: So it's actually possible to make llDialog more like llSetPrimitiveParams for example, without breaking existing scripts
[09:33] Kaluura Boa: Any while not everybody is able to use llDialog(), it's still time to implement SVC-2406
[09:33] flexi campfire: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2406
[#SVC-2406] LSL: Add "prefilled" string to llTextBox
[09:33] Kaluura Boa: Any way,*
[09:33] Draconis Neurocam: textbox works in the lastest viewer 2s
[09:33] SNIM Outlander: Yes but not with prefilled strings.
[09:34] Draconis Neurocam: would be more a viewer change then a server one
[09:34] Kelly Linden: It is a neat idea. But I'd be more inclined to include an HTML_FORM constant that accepts 1 string, and allows you to fill it in with some code that will get posted back to the script
[09:34] Kelly Linden: or other solutions that are more flexible
[09:34] Jack Abraham: HTML_FORM for llDialog?
[09:34] Kaluura Boa: Hoooo...
[09:35] Haravikk Mistral: In future sure, but that requires scripters to be familiar with HTML, and accept the added memory overhead it would cause
[09:35] SNIM Outlander: Felixibility is great, simplicity is necessary.
[09:35] Haravikk Mistral: Even a simple HTML form would be a lot more memory intensive than DIALOG_TEXT, "Prefilled value" =)
[09:35] Kaluura Boa: I don't think we're talking about writing a fully compliant HTML file here...
[09:35] Draconis Neurocam: <blink>button</blink>
[09:36] Draconis Neurocam: that was a joke
[09:36] Haravikk Mistral: So if a constants-based dialogue were added HTML could easily be added later, but the simpler option is still better in the short-term I think, and for keeping LSL clean for users that only want simple forms
[09:36] Kelly Linden: Fully compliant html (well everything that goes in the form tag) would be easiest, but it might be possible to offer some shortcuts in the accepted text.
[09:37] Kelly Linden: I don't really like the simpler option because I don't think it is flexible enough for the time it would take.
[09:37] Kelly Linden: I'd rather do it once with something really flexible, and be done.
[09:37] Draconis Neurocam: xml would be sufficiently flexible no?
[09:37] Kaluura Boa: Good idea...
[09:37] Jack Abraham: Are you assuming results returned via http or chat, Kelly?
[09:37] Kelly Linden: if it is html I can just use the embedded browser.
[09:37] Kelly Linden: could return them via chat.
[09:37] Latif Khalifa: yeah that would be nice
[09:37] Jack Abraham: I think that'd address a lot of the overhead.
[09:37] Kelly Linden: since that would probably be easier.
[09:38] Kaluura Boa: To the condition that the embedded browser doesn't open fullscreen like it currently does/did for the the profiles
[09:38] Haravikk Mistral: I had a similar proposal with XML under SVC-3045
[09:38] flexi campfire: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3045
[#SVC-3045] Allow HUDs to create native GUIs
[09:38] Kelly Linden: No it would be a smallish floater, in a corner, similar to dialogs.
[09:38] Jack Abraham really liked that one.
[09:39] Draconis Neurocam: considering the ui is mostly xml, i would imagine it would make more sense with less overhead to use xml
[09:40] Kaluura Boa: The xml used in the client is anything but slim...
[09:40] Kelly Linden: not everyone likes our ui's xml
[09:40] Haravikk Mistral: HTML has other issues though such as creating dialogues that could try to impersonate other things. And the cost in sending even XML strings around all the time is still reason enough for a simplified approach such as a constants-based list IMO, especially since we're supposed to be trying to reduce the size of scripts =)
[09:40] Latif Khalifa: you don't get dialogs that often to have to worry about how much data it's sent from the sim
[09:41] Draconis Neurocam: if you teleport around to stores, thats all you get, dialogs
[09:41] Haravikk Mistral: But a script capable of handling three or four different types of dialogue will quickly balloon in size
[09:41] Latif Khalifa: draconis, for the price of 1 texture when you teleport around you can have 10000 dialogs
[09:41] Kelly Linden: Haravikk: what I imagine is that the string provided would be what is inside the <form> and </form> tags (not the tags themselves). The dialog that pops up could be made to look distinctive as well.
[09:41] Draconis Neurocam: yes, i am well aware how terrible textures are latif
[09:42] Opensource Obscure: hi all. is this in voice?
[09:42] Latif Khalifa: kelly, just send to script what the form would post to web site ayway
[09:43] Amon Dragonash: nope
[09:43] Kelly Linden: We could strip any thing from the provided string that we wanted as well to sanitize.
[09:43] Kelly Linden: And yes, exactly latif.
[09:43] Latif Khalifa: like: field1=val1&field2&val2 ...
[09:43] Haravikk Mistral: That might be okay, but still, why enforce HTML? HTML forms are just a set of a few standard elements in a list usually anyway, most of which are already available in viewer 2's GUI, so a constants list is plenty powerful for the majority of uses I think
[09:43] Kelly Linden: That is the string the script would get in chat.
[09:43] Kelly Linden: it is way easier to implement Haravikk.
[09:44] Kelly Linden: No OO. I don't even have my headset on.
[09:44] Latif Khalifa: probably more secure too. you don't want SL scripts to send xui and potentially crash the viewr
[09:44] Kaluura Boa: And HTML isn't that hard. With a few examples, anybody can learn the needed basics.
[09:44] Latif Khalifa: it's much harder to crash xui than webkit
[09:44] Haravikk Mistral: But it's not way easier to use except for people that are already familiar with HTML, and even then they're still doing extra work to put together a few simple elements. It also has a lot less testing and security concerns to have a simple set of constants
[09:45] Latif Khalifa: testing and security? i think webkit gets plenty ;)
[09:46] Haravikk Mistral: Not webkit, to make sure the system can't be abused or produced unusual results, if we have a bunch of LSL scripters with little or no knowledge of HTML then they will quickly start creating forms with unusual results
[09:47] Latif Khalifa: If you give a html flotar, which is rendered by built in webkit, the potential for abuse is very small compared to exposing xui.
[09:47] Haravikk Mistral: I'm not talking about comparison to XUI, but to LSL constants
[09:47] Haravikk Mistral: (the original issue on the triage list)
[09:48] Kelly Linden: I think dialog and textbox solve the really simple cases of simple buttons or simple text. I think once you get past that you want layout and flexibility. I don't think another simple option is needed that isn't really flexible since we will immediately realize 'oh this almost works except I need it to do this other thing"
[09:48] Latif Khalifa: kelly +1
[09:48] Kelly Linden: If html is too hard, ask one question at a time.
[09:48] Kelly Linden: We would end up in a constant stage of 'almost good enough'
[09:48] Opensource Obscure: are we following an agenda or can i get in?
[09:49] Latif Khalifa: a LSL scripter shouldn't complain about html being too complex ;)
[09:49] Kelly Linden: OO http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Kelly_Linden/script_jira_triage and SVC-6539 right now
[09:49] Amon Dragonash: One an have html knowledge prior to SL so that could be an advantage or disadvantage.. I don't think learning curve is that much at stake here
[09:49] Latif Khalifa: takes about 3 min to learn <form></form>
[09:50] Kaluura Boa: Sure... No fancy styling or anything... Bare HTML.
[09:50] Kelly Linden: I'm gonna close this one haravikk as won't finish and put my thoughts in a comment.
[09:50] Haravikk Mistral: The constants list can be used for things like colour or position entry, entering several names into a security scanner and so-on, there are plenty of simple cases that aren't covered by llTextBox() but for which HTML is overkill
[09:51] Latif Khalifa: html is not overkill you can make it as simpel as you want
[09:51] Kelly Linden: yes, we would have to constantly be extending it with our own custom language, essentially, forced into list format. It gets ugly quick.
[09:51] Kelly Linden: I'd like to move on to the next jira, if that is all right?
[09:52] Haravikk Mistral: It's not quite list format, it's the same format as button dialogues, so you can make items up to 3 button-spaces wide
[09:52] Latif Khalifa: <form>Please enter your sekrit code <input type="text" name="code"> <input type="submit"> </form>
[09:52] Kelly Linden: I meant the language to define your dialog is forced into list format
[09:52] Kelly Linden: we would be defining a layout language that has to fit into an LSL list.
[09:52] Haravikk Mistral: True, but LSL scripters are already using that on a daily basis with llSetPrimitiveParams, llParticleSystem etc.
[09:53] Draconis Neurocam: i love particle system to death, but its old and broken
[09:53] Kaluura Boa: I see an obvious fear and hate of change.
[09:53] Latif Khalifa: that's only because LSL is limited and there is no other option ;)
[09:54] Haravikk Mistral: But it works, if LSL gets other data-types then by all means create a new way of entering those things, but it's still a lot simpler, cleaner, and leaner than HTML IMO
[09:54] Kelly Linden: I'd love to have another option. :) In this case, for dialogs, there is a world standard. HTML and forms. I don't want to design my own language for something already solved the world over.
[09:54] Latif Khalifa: yup
[09:54] Haravikk Mistral: Then why does LSL exist? =P
[09:54] Kaluura Boa: Yeah... Re-inventing the wheel is never a good idea.
[09:55] Kelly Linden: Haravikk: I'd love to have something besides LSL as well. :)
[09:55] Latif Khalifa: Haravikk, I'd much rather code in c# if Kelly ever gets a go ahead to finish it ;)
[09:55] Jack Abraham: Ah, another thing for me to learn. : )
[09:56] Kelly Linden: Learning is good for you!
[09:56] Jack Abraham: Yep.
[09:56] Opensource Obscure: Kelly this may interest you - Ordinal Malaprop and Yoz today had a Twitter conversation about HTTP, LSL, better data structures etc. - go to https://twitter.com/#!/ordinal or https://twitter.com/#!/yoz
[09:56] Haravikk Mistral: If we were doing this in C# it wouldn't be the same problem, but I don't think shoe-horning HTML into LSL for something basic like a dialogue is a good idea, not for basic object interaction
[09:56] Kelly Linden: For basic use lldialog and lltextbox
[09:57] Latif Khalifa: Haravikk, it's not shoe-horning, it's what HTML was designed to do and what's used for on billions of pages out there.
[09:57] Latif Khalifa: Creating input forms
[09:57] Kelly Linden: I hate trying to follow twitter conversations between any two people when one isn't me.
[09:58] Opensource Obscure: I'll send you an email if that's ok.
[09:58] Draconis Neurocam: any c syntax language, and xforms should have gotten better acceptance than it did i think
[09:58] Kelly Linden: OO I talk with Yoz everyweek about scripting, but sure go ahead.
[09:58] Opensource Obscure: i want more Twitter support in the viewer and it seems HUDs are not good
[09:59] Opensource Obscure: see https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-9 for an alternative proposal
[09:59] flexi campfire: [#STORM-9] As a User, I want to share my location and a custom status with friends on Twitter so they can follow what I'm up to in Second Life.
[09:59] Latif Khalifa: i thought Yoz was web and social and those sorts of things, not server and sripting
[09:59] Opensource Obscure: written by esbee. it's about a native support in the viewer
[09:59] Liisa Runo: rather catForum support than twitter support
[09:59] Kelly Linden: yoz is yoz
[09:59] Haravikk Mistral: Hmm, I got logged out =(
[09:59] Kelly Linden: Ok, I have another meeting in 1 minute.
[09:59] Draconis Neurocam: take care kelly
[10:00] Kelly Linden: Thanks for coming out for the unofficial scripting group.
[10:00] Jack Abraham: Later Kelly.
[10:00] Opensource Obscure: thanks Kelly
[10:00] Jack Abraham: YOu're unofficially welcome.
[10:00] Latif Khalifa: take care Kelly
[10:00] Amon Dragonash: Till next time everyone