User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2009-07-23

== Topic & Summary ==
User Experience Interest Group Discussion for July 23, 2009.
Topic: Build Tool Extensions.
We discussed some of the building tool extensions and improvements linked to by , including:
* - Ability to do simple math in numeric edit fields
* - Multiple viewports
* - Add Orthographic / Isometric Views to the View Menu
== Transcript ==
[15:20]	Stickman Ingmann: 	So this was brought up on sldev earlier today: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-12278
[15:20]	Charlette Proto: 	what is it about Stick or shall I look
[15:21]	Frans Charming: 	it a meta issue on building ui improvements
[15:21]	Stickman Ingmann: 	It's a meta issue. Has a few things that should be relevant for UI things.
[15:21]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Oh, one of Nyx's meta issues. Presumably that's right up our street.
[15:21]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Depending on topic
[15:21]	Stickman Ingmann: 	One of my favorites is supporting some basic math in the fields you can input numbers.
[15:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Ah, nice one
[15:21]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek, do we have a topic yet?
[15:22]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Nice of you to drop in, Techwolf.
[15:22]	Xugu Madison: 	hey Tech!
[15:22]	Charlette Proto: 	hi Tech
[15:22]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hiya TW!
[15:22]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Open topic. This is a good one, though
[15:22]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	yea...I was in another window, reading main on the new UI change.
[15:22]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	main=mail
[15:22]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hi Tech
[15:22]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	Poppy did declare Unkle.
[15:23]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Techwolf, what was this stuff about viewports you were playing with? I heard you're doing something, but not the details.
[15:23]	Techwolf Lupindo reads the jira... 	Techwolf Lupindo reads the jira...
[15:24]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	Ah, I did contruble to that. I just had one patch of mine comminted. It added hot-key to select one or more prim in sequence.
[15:24]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	About vewports...
[15:25]	Morgaine Dinova: 	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-14707 (from that mata) is interesting. I'd add "make the pivot point visible" to it.
[15:25]	Charlette Proto: 	besides math we kind of talked about all those issues in the past
[15:25]	Stickman Ingmann: 	I tried to use that hotkey earlier, Techwolf, and found it wasn't already in. I was sad.
[15:25]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	No idea. Or my mind is frazzed.
[15:25]	Charlette Proto: 	take a breath Tech, you will come to it in time
[15:26]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	ok....the last two comments was out of sequence.
[15:26]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	&*&*()&*() lag
[15:26]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	Viewports...No idea. Sorry.
[15:26]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Use -nolag commandline flag. Even better, build the whole viewer with USE="nolag"
[15:27]	Charlette Proto: 	the math is a nice idea, eg one could do translation etc
[15:28]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe secondlife.exe -lag
[15:28]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	*GIGGLES*:)~~ ~~
[15:28]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	Stick, if you can find any comment about viewports, let me know cuase I have no idea. *GIGGLES* :)~~ ~~
[15:28]	Xugu Madison: 	Maths would be awesome
[15:28]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Is that viewport Jira in any way related to having multiple cameras?
[15:28]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Techwolf, everyone's been talking about what you've been doing recently. I grabbed a key word that may not be related, so I probably got the wrong idea.
[15:29]	Stickman Ingmann: 	I don't think so, Morgaine. I had my own about "multiple cameras" like you have in standard 3D editing applications.
[15:29]	Charlette Proto: 	we've been dreaming about multiple cameras even plan elevation etc views a number of times
[15:29]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yep
[15:29]	Stickman Ingmann: 	The reason that was on sldev earlier is because there were four or five issues of pulling common 3D editor features into SL, and Nyx pulled the "building tool improvements" meta issue out, and I just pushed those into it.
[15:30]	Charlette Proto: 	the math notation would be likely to have various approach preferences (I think) maybe woth talking about
[15:30]	Jacek Antonelli: 	There's a patch for the math stuff in VWR-675. Imprudence uses it already, it works great
[15:31]	Charlette Proto: 	nice, I didn't know
[15:31]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Imagine how nice it would be to set camera points and orientations in the current sim (wherever the camera is already allowed to go), and then tile their outputs into floaters on your screen, PiP style.
[15:32]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Or just have an isometric top/side view, and a perspective view, so you can build things and see what you're doing without alt-camming all over the place. Too much.
[15:32]	Frans Charming nods 	Frans Charming nods
[15:32]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	The 3DConnexion Spacenav joystick is great for doing that. Flycamming all over the build while building it.
[15:33]	Frans Charming: 	Do you build with the spacenav too?
[15:33]	Charlette Proto: 	the conventional CAD style plan/elevation/side & perspective views would be the most practical addition to building tasks
[15:33]	Techwolf Lupindo: 	Yep. I jsut use it for flycam and use the mouse to do the "clicking" on the build.
[15:33]	Frans Charming: 	oh ok. :)
[15:34]	Morgaine Dinova: 	But for isometric views, the eye point has to be at infinity so that the frustum has parallel sides. Is that easy in GL?
[15:34]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Sure, very easy in GL
[15:34]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cool!
[15:35]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Happy news! :D
[15:35]	Charlette Proto: 	there are some editing tool implications if CAD style windows were added
[15:35]	Jacek Antonelli: 	They call it Othorgraphic mode. There's even a function to set up an othographic camera view very simply. glOrtho or something like that
[15:36]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Doh! Ortho, lol. I've even used it myself, hehe. Oh well, I guess I need more coffee
[15:36]	Charlette Proto: 	2D editing would not require some of the editing nodes we currently have as these would overlap
[15:37]	Jacek Antonelli: 	There'd probably need to be some tweaks to certain things... like, I bet the nametag code would get very confused. But it's doable
[15:37]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Op, getting a call. BRB
[15:38]	Charlette Proto: 	one thing is the choice of suitable conventions from existing CAD progs, some of these are diffrent than Second Life™
[15:39]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Good point Charlette
[15:39]	Charlette Proto: 	also numerical editing of parameters behind a selected element (vertice) would be nice
[15:40]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrm, what do you mean? I don't understand
[15:40]	Charlette Proto: 	being able to move a vertice to a particular position etc
[15:41]	Jacek Antonelli: 	So, editing the mesh shape? Or more like moving the whole shape to snap a vertex to a particular location?
[15:42]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yep. Pure manual manipulation is not enough, every UI action needs to be just a call to an API, which can then be driven by other things, including numeric UI fields.
[15:42]	Charlette Proto: 	moving just one vertice or side of a prim, a bit like grig but without changing the grid
[15:42]	Jacek Antonelli nods. I agree Morgaine 	Jacek Antonelli nods. I agree Morgaine
[15:43]	Charlette Proto: 	current edit floater would need to be expanded (likely) or switch between object and individual vertices
[15:45]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Are we talking about aligning?
[15:45]	Charlette Proto: 	it would also make sense to have common behaviour behind linked objects eg parts of a wall could act as a single object eg so that surafces (inside/outside) can be defined as one
[15:46]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I wo der how Dzonatas did it. His MonoVida Studio viewer ripped just the renderer + networking out of the LL viewer and turned them into a shared library, with binding to C#. Then the GUI was rewritten in Gtk#.
[15:46]	Morgaine Dinova: 	wonder*
[15:46]	Charlette Proto: 	working with plan elevation views like in CAD Stick
[15:47]	Armin Weatherwax: 	MonoVida is pretty cool
[15:48]	Charlette Proto: 	what is MonoVida used for?
[15:49]	Charlette Proto: 	design or playing
[15:51]	Armin Weatherwax: 	the UI is (going to be) rewritten in c# and makes such things as the IM floater outside the viewerwindow possible
[15:52]	Charlette Proto: 	that sounds nice, I always wanted to have 3D and tool windows without overlap to improve (by shrinking) the 3D rendering
[15:54]	Stickman Ingmann: 	The official Linden UI is going to be rewritten in C#? That's announced and official information?
[15:54]	Charlette Proto: 	less of a problem these days, but 3D performace suffers since a lot of the rendered window is covered up by tools
[15:55]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrm? I don't think anyone has said that, Stickman? MonoVida is a third party open source project
[15:55]	Armin Weatherwax: 	nono, Stickman, Dzonatas project MonoVida Studio rewrites essential parts in c#
[15:55]	Frans Charming: 	Ah.
[15:55]	Frans Charming: 	I thought you meant the sl viewer too.
[15:56]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Ok. 1.23 seems to put IMs to chat history no matter what options I check, so it gets a little hard to follow conversation threads sometimes.
[15:56]	Charlette Proto: 	but is the MonaVida an Second Life™ viewer or what?
[15:56]	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: [...script spam...]	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: [...script spam...]
[15:56]	Frans Charming: 	wow
[15:56]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Thank you. Always wanted one of those.
[15:56]	Charlette Proto: 	wtf????
[15:56]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yay for shouting scripts, hehehe
[15:57]	Frans Charming: 	oh it is a status update rss reader I think, which malfunactioning.
[15:57]	Frans Charming: 	*is
[15:57]	Stickman Ingmann: 	So we've got three minutes left? D:
[15:57]	Charlette Proto: 	it was HTML strange
[15:57]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Charlette: As I understand it, MonoVida is a viewer fork
[15:58]	Charlette Proto: 	wooot 3 min??? Stick
[15:59]	Armin Weatherwax: 	yeah, jacek, it is .. think the url is http://jira.dzonux.net:8080/secure/Dashboard.jspa
[15:59]	Charlette Proto: 	no Lindens here Stick we go as long as we have something to talk about
[15:59]	Stickman Ingmann: 	My first time visiting one of these. :)
[16:00]	Charlette Proto: 	I know what you mean, Lindens just bolt on the dot, Benjamin used to leave 10 mni early
[16:01]	Xugu Madison must scamper, take care all! 	Xugu Madison must scamper, take care all!
[16:01]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Later Xugu! Good luck with those vendors.
[16:02]	Xugu Madison: 	Thanks Stickman! :)
[16:02]	Morgaine Dinova: 	See you Xugu!
[16:04]	Charlette Proto: 	what kind of math is allowed by the patch included in Imprudence?
[16:04]	Charlette Proto: 	eg does it allow things like sic/cos abs etc?
[16:05]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Let me check..
[16:05]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe I meant round not abs
[16:05]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Do you mean Aimee's maths patch? That has trig I think.
[16:05]	Stickman Ingmann: 	I've only ever needed basic addition or multiplication and their opposites when handling that stuff. But I guess if you shift-copy an item and Ctrl-z it back, then sin() and cos() and tan() it...
[16:05]	Stickman Ingmann: 	Really, that advanced?
[16:06]	Charlette Proto: 	random would be fun (within a range)
[16:06]	Frans Charming: 	heh
[16:06]	Stickman Ingmann: 	I like random.
[16:06]	Jacek Antonelli: 	No, it doesn't seem to have trig functions
[16:07]	Charlette Proto: 	some of the symetries would benefir from trig functions for sure
[16:07]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yeah
[16:08]	Charlette Proto: 	maybe Javascript or similar expressions could made to work, especially if one could introduce some global variables into it eg width height or just a, b, c
[16:09]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Does the built-in browser handle Javascript?
[16:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I think so, yes
[16:11]	Charlette Proto: 	I don't use it, but it would have for many pages to work eg Web2 blogs etc
[16:11]	Armin Weatherwax: 	time for me ... bye everybody :)
[16:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	ni ni Armin
[16:12]	Armin Weatherwax: 	:)
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	bye Armin
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	I found this in About "LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.25585 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.21_0000000000)"
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	is that the browser engine?
[16:12]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yep
[16:13]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I've gotta head out and do some work. Bleh. Thanks for coming everyone! See you next week :)
[16:14]	Charlette Proto: 	frankly I think a lot of the vierwer UI could benefit from JavaScript
[16:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Thanks Jacek, tc :-)
[16:14]	Charlette Proto: 	see you next week Jacek