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

[Kelly Linden]

Dale Glass wrote:
> 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. 
>
>   
There has been no recent development on this, and I don't think ever any
development beyond design discussion.  It is a non-trivial task and it
may take some convincing to move it into the 'improves stability of SL'
group.
>> * 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
>   
This is actually a complex system on the server end.  Changing this to
be more IRC like would actually reduce complexity of the group IM system
a fair amount .... until someone says 'make it an option'.  As far as I
know we are the only chat system (in any game, irc or other chat system)
that behaves this way.
>> * 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.
>
>   
Actually one of our more awesome developers has this mostly finished in
a sandbox somewhere.... I should bug her about it again.  :)
>> * 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.
>   
SL does a lot more than group chat.  IRC *just* does chat.  It handles
chat with multiple servers that can have connection issues (netsplits),
and users can also have connection issues including lag and disconnects
- it isn't perfect.  That said our group chat has semi-recently
changed.  There used to be a single central server called the UserServer
which maintained a connection to each and every online user.  It managed
IMs and Group IMs.  IMs were moved off first a couple of years ago,
however group IMs remained until recently.   Now group messages are
routed to users through their respective simulator hosts by looking up
the presence information for each person etc.  This is a more
complicated system that in theory scales better with the number of users
and regions.  However 'scales better' doesn't equal 'performs better'
and we are still making improvements to this system.

 - Kelly

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