[opensource-dev] Plugins/Modular architecture

[Francesco Rabbi]

Every emerald developer if free to join project viewer trunk and toss
patches (and not only developers from emerald)

-- 
Sent by iPhone

Il giorno 02/set/2010, alle ore 17:13, Talia Tokugawa
<talia.tokugawa at googlemail.com> ha scritto:

> Hi, first post on this mailing list.
> So I wake up this morning and I Login to SL using Snowstorm and I am instantly annoyed it's not Emerald. I got to thinking on the subject of viewers, secondlife and the general usage thereof. There are many different user types, new residents, power users, lindens, developers etc. Yet there are only a limited number of Viewers and TPV that you can pick from. X number of holes for a potentially unlimited number of blocks to fit into.
>
> I know this has been suggested before as friends have suggested it. Why not make the viewer more Modular? Introduce a plugin architecture. Allow any user to "build" their own client that fits their needs and requirements.
>
> If you look at the lists of features that are currently available to people and then try fit them to the different user stories how do you justify that?
>
> So for example. We take a look at the "New Resident" profile. They arrive in Second Life. No community gateway and only wiki/kb to assist them. They have this big program to learn.. How much of this could be stripped out to plugins to reduce the UI cliff that they have just ran into. Very simple starting example here. LSL editor. How many users (not just new users) actually code? This "program" could be taken out and made into a plugin. Likewise with the edit windows. New users could quite happily do without having a full edit window. Maybe just reduce that to a "fitting" window for attachments. Have a basic window with Pos/Rot/Scale. Both these examples are something that different user stories would need, but just confuse things for the new user, then as the user becomes familiar with what they want they can get plugins to enable them to take on different roles. Say then want to start making attachments. They would goto the plugin repository and get the "advanced edit" window. Later down the line they decide they want to get themselves some land and do some landscaping they'd go back to the repository and get themselves the "land tools" plugin.
>
> This is just a very simple case study for how this system would appear to the users. I guess it wouldn't be to hard to supply clients with plugin bundles. Different user profiles could get the basic stripped down vanilla client with a specific set of plugins tailored to their requirements, going right through to a full official client with all the plugins to have a client that is as capable as the current clients.
>
> I think given this structure, third party plugins over third party viewers would become far more common place. If you look through the feature requests list for snowstorm. Half the items on that list are features that come direct from Emerald.
>
> In terms of keeping an eye on things it would be a lot easier for LL too. If a system were set in place where the source of the plugins were uploaded to LL for addition into the plugin repository the Labs could check through the code before compiling and getting the LL seal of approval. As opposed to the current system of TPV where a new viewer is compiled by one person from a team and the whole system relies on trust of that one person (ref. emerald).
>
> Anyways, my two pence on the whole viewer thing ;)
> Talia
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