Where should the default texture option go?

Should the default texture option be in the View menu or in the Debug menu?

With a choice of default texture, those who are deathly afraid of bruising their delicate avatar body on an uzrezzed building and who enjoy seeing gray rectangles when they boune into things or when particles first appear can have their choice, and so will the thiose who would prefer to see nothing.

O, I've wanted a Default texture for awhile—namely, something other than plywood. That's different than what you were writing about but I've been thinking about it for awhile now.

"Default Texture" in this case is being used to refer to the texture that shows up before the real texture has been received and displayed, the one that people want to see so they don't have to fly up high to avoid running into invisible buildings. Torley's response is not to the point of my post. The term "default texture" is being used in this manner just described in a number of posts currently, in connection with the recent change from a blank not-loaded-yet texture to a gray rectangle with a white outline.

To Torley's point, being able to set the other sense of default texture from plywood to something else is an excellent idea, perhaps just having the last texture selected be the default for the next time would be good, or have a settable default texture and have the last texture used displayed for convenient selection as well.

While on the subject of defaults, how about a user selectable default script?

Hmm, the wording is confusing, what about saying "loading texture" instead? Or "Watch out theres going to be a prim here but I don't have the texture yet, texture", heheh.

In any case, I think it'd be a good idea to be able to set any of the defaults, for loading texture, default texture, and default script.

I personaly would keep the Default texture the same though, since I like having Plywood available at a buttons push.

I think... but I'm not sure... that you may be able to specify a different loading texture by editing the viewart.ini just putting in another key in place of the current one... logicly should work... but might not. Not saying this doesn't mean a UI isn't needed to do this, but rather if you're itching to change it, try that.

I would suggest maybe having it in say Debug -> Default(s) (Assets?), which would then pop up a GUI window that would have a tab for say "Textures" with "Loading Texture" and "Default Texture" available to drag one from your inventory into, and another tab for "Scripts" with a script dialog that you can paste code into. You could add more tabs as needed, say "Notecard", and uh... I can't think of any others.... maybe "Create Shape" incase you want to start with something besides a cube when building?

Anyhow, I think that would work out nicely. Customization is king!

You are right Oz, "loading textue" would be a much better name, I was just trying to follow current usage.

I was also trying to trick people by asking where the option should go, as if it was a given that it should exist and the only question was where to put it.

I'd like to have an option to set the in-focus, active window opacity of the chat history panel. Anyone know how to do that?

If they were ever added, my vote would be to put the default-loading texture option for prims and the default-loading texture option for particles (seperate options, please) in the debug menu.

I would out the default-build texture on a texture-options dialog, that you could access via the build dialog, pretty much like the current grid-options box.

Personally, I prefer bumping into a build I can't see yet because it hasn't rezz'd rather than being surrounded by HUGE gray rectangles with white borders! I FEEL soooo claustrophopic!

Yes, I believe you can do this from colors.ini . I have made my own modification to this, which turns all of the GUI transparent (I got annoyed by stuff blocking my view), you can see how it looks, and download the txt file with the changes here: http://oz.slinked.net/downloads.php

Hope thats what you mean. I forget if you can specificly change just the Chat History opacity or not, poking around in colors.ini will give you an idea.

Thanks Ox, this does indeed make the chat history transparent when it is in focus, and even more transparent when it is not in focus.

I cannot tell which setting made the change.

The Chat History settings from your file are:



which should be fully transparent and fully opaque, and which seem to affect the chat history text foreground and background colors, rather than the dialog box colors itself.

Oh, if ony we could just tell the system to not include the IMs in the normal public chat display, they will show up in an IM window anyway.

I wonder why we can't change these setting in a way similar to how Windows lets you change the appearance of windows display elements, with a mockup of the screen that you can click on and modify.

Ah, bulluck, I forgot that it doesn't work apparently. :/ guess thats one thing they overlooked and never fixed.

I think they intended to do a GUI counterpart that would allow you to change colors of the interface from the client, but that feature got pushed back and is now probably pushed back to when they get around to customizing the interface to allow us to do more complicated things than just color changing.

Supposedly way back when, either 1.6 or 1.7 was supposed to have "skinning" capabilities, which is what the colors.ini were supposed to be leading into. But since that never came about, they kinda just sit there, largely unused and some bugs here and there (like the chat history colors apparently not having any effect).

However, when some things are added or changed, they do also occasionaly update the colors.ini as well, for example when the colors and addition of new Show Land Owners colors were made, a change to reflect this was made in colors.ini as well.

So it seems *someone* is still trying to keep colors.ini atleast somewhat usable and of value.

Make that "default-loading texture for non-phantom objects and default-loading texture for phantom objects" please. Anything you can't stub your toes on should be smoke.

I absolutely HATE the new gray and white loading textures. Everyone I know feels the same as well. I want the option to go back the way it was, either in Debug or Preferences. I'd rather wait a few to rez the actual texture instead of rezzing ugly gray boxes and then rezzing the intended texture. I do landscaping and it has become a real pain with trees etc...

I lag worse now than ever with this 'new and improved feature'.

Oz's colors.ini file is worth trying for those who can't stand having the dialog boxes and panels constantly obscuring there view of the world.

Of course actually designing the screen elements to fit and work together in a rational way wouldn't hurt either. Like umm, slender property bars instead of giant rectangles for the edit window, and dockable toolbars and such?

The transparent backgrounds work pretty well over the world view, but don't work well when they are on top of each other. When they are opaque, of course, they don't work at all stacked on top of each other, so one is intantly compelled to move them to where you can see what you need to see. When they are transparent there is a tendency to try to see through the one on top to see the information you need below, or to read the one on top even though it is obscured by the ones showing through from underneath.

It would be nice if they could be transparent with respect to the world view but opaque with respect to each other, the you could see the world through where the panels don't overlap and see the top panel where they do overlap.

The chat history being transparent works fine so far as the transparency goes, but I have a problem with using the chat history to see incoming chat because if you scroll back to see something from an earlier time and don't scrol back to the bottom you no longer see the new incoming chat. I'd like to see a chat window split into two parts, one being a one line area for the latest incoming chat, and the other a scrollable area like the chat history is now.

The chat entry area in Oz's setup is transparent, it lets you see your legs through it, useful for landing on things when flying.

The gray bar with the buttons in it at the bottom is also transparent, and this let's you see a bit more of the world, and is also useful, making me wonder if we really need to have a background for the button area at all.