[sldev] Roadmap: 1.19.0 Viewer

[Latif Khalifa]

Kelly Linden wrote:
> Anders Arnholm wrote:
>> Argent Stonecutter skrev:
>>> On 2008-01-09, at 12:11, Abh Serechai Belxjander wrote:
>>>>   Voice is its own "subservice" thread and seperate server,
>>>>   Why not the same using IRC as a backend for chat?
>>>
>>> Jabber, please.
>>
>> Jabber back end would be really great... and jabber login :-)
>>
> Even jabber does not support the 'passive listener' mode, where you auto 
> join a channel you are 'interested in' when someone says something in 
> the channel.  Even just typing that it seems bizarre that we have 
> developed chat to a point where that makes sense.  It could of course be 
> done with a client hack where you join the channel just don't draw the 
> tab until you get an actual chat line (not a join/part message etc) for 
> the channel/room/group.  Every dedicated chat system that I know of only 
> has 2 modes: you are in the channel and can see the chat or you are not, 
> and you won't see the chat.  The half way sort of interested but not 
> really there until something interesting happens is *weird*.  I would 
> very much like to see us move away from that model if possible.  Does 
> anyone know any other chat system that behaves this way?
> 
> Disclaimer: The above is not a statement of intent or work - Jonathan is 
> doing some good work on meeting more people's expectations than I 
> would.  It is merely me expressing my desire that more of our system 
> work in "industry standard" ways when at all possible.  Someone is going 
> to read this and interpret it as "LL says they are going to do FOO" - 
> and the fear of that happening has prevented me from discussing issues 
> on this list in the past.  I'd like to get past that, so the disclaimer 
> is now almost as large as the actual content of this message.

I understand you wish to move to "standardized" way the chat/im systems 
work. However, we that spend a lot of time in-world have come to depend 
and love the way the current system works, where IM tab appears when 
something interesting happens. There was a great demand on the ability 
to "mute" or opt out of the chat from specific groups, but I have not 
heard any in-world demand for opt-in group IMs.

Many communities/support groups depend on the current behavior. The 
reason we want this unique solution where IM tab appears on demand is 
that in SL is the group chat is one of the subsystems that we use all 
day, its not the main focus of our activities. We do not have screen 
real estate to have all those group chats tabs open as we would have in 
a dedicated IRC / other IM client.


> If we were to move to a 'standard' chat backend (woot! yes! I love that 
> idea! jabber or whatever!) we should try pretty hard to have as few 
> exceptions or special cases to how it works as possible.  In other 
> words, I think we get a lot more out of using a standard chat system if 
> we behave like a standard chat system than if we were to behave like our 
> own special little chat system just using a standard backend.  Even 
> though the latter case still has some value.

Again, understanding the desire to standardize, I think that the current 
behavior should be considered the strength and not the weakness. And its 
a pure usability issue, the back end does not matter, its how its 
presented to the user in the viewer.

- L