[sldev] Landmarks and Navigation Project Update 2008-05-22

Lawson English lenglish5 at cox.net
Sun May 25 13:40:03 PDT 2008


Matthew Dowd wrote:
> Well, ever since I started using Vista, I've thought that the SL 
> Viewer would benefit from a (optional!) sidebar which could accomodate 
> UI components (e.g. inventory or build dialogs, chat windows etc.), 
> client-side UI plugins *and* HUDs. True - you loose screen estate, but 
> you also would avoid having UI components getting in the way (the 
> number of times, that build dialog gets in the way of what I'm 
> building....)
>  

The current GUI is too intimately tied to the SL client-server 
model--not to mention the global variables that exist in the current 
viewer, to easily do this kind of thing. Folder objects contain 
automatic update mechanisms to inform the asset server when you've done 
something to the content of a folder, for example. There's no base, 
plain-vanilla folder class that asset-folders are built on top of, so 
you'd need to create a separate class hierarchy to handle hierarchical 
GUI elements. In fact, you'd still need to reimplement the list class 
because that is not robust enough to handle folders (SL folders are 
their own class built separately from lists --they only talk to the 
normal GUI class at the scrollable view layer).

The GUI issues are the reason, in my opinion, why a plug-in API has 
never been created. Likewise for why scripting of the client is still 
not standardized. Likewise for why a UI for skinning has not been 
provided for Dazzle.


Lawson




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