Darmok and Jelad

Every time I attempt to read the docs, all I can think is "Darmock and Jalad at Tenagra".

In case anyone doesn't get that reference, I'll explain it (unlike what would happen if this post were a scripting manual). In one of the more interesting episodes of Star Trek TNG, Picard finds himself faced with the daunting task of having to communicate with the Tamarians, a race who frustrate everyone they encounter because they appear to make no sense whatsoever. It turns out their entire language is based on anecdote. They speak not in sentences, but in odd phrases from stories that the listener most already know in order to get the meaning of each phrase. They say things like, "Darmock and Jalad at Tenagra", and "Shaka, when the walls fell," and "Temba, his arms wide," fully expecting that the listener already knows what those things mean, and never even dreaming that someone might not.

The LSL manual seems to be written exactly the same way. It tells you things like "All LSL scripts have a simple implicit state machine with one or more states. All scripts must have a default
state, so iff there is only one state, it will be the ’default’ state. When a script is first started or reset, it will start
out in the default state."

Okay... What the heck is a "state machine", or for that matter a "state"? I have no idea. The word was used no less than six times in this single paragraph (if you can call it a paragraph), but the book has offered no explained what it means (we're only 3 paragraphs past "You're probably wondering what you can do". So, I flip back to the table of contents and find there's a section called "States". I turn to that section only to find it's just as abstruse as the the page I came from. It sas, "All scripts must have a ’default’ state, which is the first state entered when the script starts. States contain event handlers that are triggered by the LSL virtual machine. All states must supply at least one event handler - it’s not
really a state without one."

So now I'm left to wonder not only what is a state (the word has been used 5 more times, but still no definition), but also what is an event handler and a virtual machine. All I'm able to gather so far is that the authors absolutely love the word "state", and that it has no defintion of what it is, only what it sometimes is not, as a state without an event handler is not really a state (which could explain New Jersey I suppose, but doesn't really help me here.)

At that point I gave up, or as the Tamarians might put it, "Chosen Few, his face black, his eyes red."

That was a year and a half ago, and I'm no closer to unlocking the two great mysteries of the scripting world. The first of course is what is a state, and the second is how does one get past page 3 of the LSL manual without having visions of torturing small animals. All I'm able to do is more or less what Azazel said. I grab an existing script, fiddle with it until I figure out what to change so it will do what I want, and hope for the best. Most times, I end up breaking it, and then calling in one of my more feted friends to put it back together.

Moved to Off-Topic.

Anybody know where I can get a Darmok Jelado?

Anybody know where I can get a Darmok Jelado?

Just wanted to point out that in a meeting today, I was asked how a duplicate of my company's website was going, and I replied "Shaka, when the walls fell".

My boss had to leave the room he was laughing so hard. Everybody else sort of tittered until somebody got the nerve up to ask me WTF i was talking about. I just said "not so good"