[sldev] Re: OS-SL Development Issues (was Upcoming viewer releases)

[Dale Glass]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 09:21:10AM -0700, Kelly Linden wrote:
> I disagree.  In bullet form to be more easily refuted:

> * When developing SL especially, running a *second* instance of the
> viewer for communication is non trivial load.  "Lite" clients off set
> this somewhat, currently in exchange for some amount of complexity and
> robustness.  IRC clients have been around for well over a decade while
> lite SL clients have been around less than a year (I think).
Wasn't there some plan to use Jabber? I think that should solve the
issue nicely. 

> 
> * Forced chat join.  When anyone sends an IM to a group in SL it forces
> every member to join the chat.  I would rather specifically choose which
> chats to join and when, and only receive the messages for those chats I
> already have open.
Well, that seems to be like something that's quite fixed in the viewer

> * Name and keyword notification.  I rely heavily in IRC on the visual
> indicators (bouncing dock, highlighted text) when someone mentions my name.
Was thinking of giving the name highlighting thing a try, since I'm
messing with the chat code anyway.

> * Performance and reliability (already mentioned)
My apologies if this sounds impolite, but I've got to ask:

How come this is still a problem? I've seen IRC servers with more users
on them than everybody logged in right now, and talking is IRC's primary
function. SL probably has less traffic.

 
> It isn't far from competing, but I don't think it is 'pretty much
> identical'.  :)
Well. What I meant here mostly is that group IM is IRC-like. I would
divide communication methods into several types:

Real time chats: Things are happening right now. Multiple participants.
Expectation of quick reply. Conversation is ephemeral. Examples:
IRC, SL group chat, SL public chat

Message lists: Messages are stored. Multiple participans. No expectation
of quick reply. Conversation is long lasting, very old posts can be
replied to. Examples: Mailing lists, usenet, email, message boards.

IM: One to one communication for the most part. Not necessarily real
time, but can be. Possibility of recalling old conversations. Examples:
SL IM, various IM systems, SMS on cell phones.

Broadcasts: Communication from one to many. Messages are stored.
Discussion if allowed can happen over long lengths of time. Examples:
News sites, blogs.


So what I meant here is that SL already has something in the "real time
chat" category. It may not be perfect, but that shouldn't be an excuse
to use IRC, we should fix SL instead as the fixes required shouldn't be
large. There's nothing in SL that makes this fundamentally difficult.

By that I mean that putting a blog on a website is easy, but putting a
realtime chat on it is hard due to problems with the underlying tech. SL
doesn't have that problem, so it's not a good excuse to postpone fixing
things.


Things SL is lacking: Message lists, and broadcasts. I'd like to some
day be able to move the mailing list to inside SL, or publish my blog
there, but currently there's no argument that SL as it exists now is
unsuitable for those purposes. So it's hard to argue against the
existence of SL Dev outside of SL. But I don't think that applies to the
use of IRC.


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