[sldev] Re: SL Protocol

Lawson English lenglish5 at cox.net
Fri Jan 11 11:21:53 PST 2008


Jo Grant/Cambridge/IBM wrote:
>
> Lawson wrote:
> >Things will get ever more out-of-synch with the current pages unless the
> >community picks up the slack.
> I'm very, very keen on seeing a well documented login protocol. I 
> joined this list because I ran into a brick wall trying to implement 
> the protocol in Java. The understanding I got is that there is some 
> vast change immanent in how the protocol works and it wasn't worth 
> embarking on a major project until that was done. I've been skimming 
> subject lines since and I haven't really seen what I thought was a big 
> change in this.
> I'm sure the answer is in the detailed messages. Forgive me for asking 
> for a summary. What's up? If we write code against what is there at 
> the moment, how quickly can we expect it to go out of date?
>
> If we're not shooting at a moving target, I'm more than happy to 
> update the wiki with information gleaned. I did some updates when I 
> was writing my Java code with my discoveries before.
>
> Cheers,
Jo, Zha Ewry (David Levine) of IBM has been testing my protocol docs on 
the wiki that are basically a description of how I got things to work 
with Python, by implementing the same thing using Java. You and Zha 
should get together and compare notes. I'll be happy to put stuff up on 
the wiki if neither of you do it, but it needs to get done. The Linden 
budget for creating wiki-based docs is pretty close to non-existent at 
the moment but if SL is to be come a de facto standard, the docs have to 
exist, no matter who puts them up.


The moving target issue of the protocols is a valid point, but, Zha and 
I decided that if we don't at least TRY to pin down the current state, 
even if it changes next week, we'll never understand what the [current] 
current state is. Since the AWG exists to facilitate getting the 
protocols ready for the multi-vendor, meta-[second life] grid (and 
beyond, to the multi-protocol-meta-grid)  if the AWG doesn't understand 
the current protocols, no matter how transitional they are, there's no 
way to advise on what future protocols might be used to replace them 
--not without assuming a completely incompatible system is desired, 
which is definitely NOT the case...

...so, we try to document the protocols-du-jour, knowing full well that 
they may well change by the time we can get something up on the wiki. 
Its a losing battle, but the battle has to be fought, even so.



Lawson



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