New Script Functions!

I had an idea im not to sure if its possible but ill throw it out ther anyways, i was thinking someting like:

llMakeWindow(vector size,list params);

then for params mabey like:

For types of windows

WINDOW_TYPE_FORM
WINDOW_TYPE_WEBSITE
WINDOW_TYPE_AD
WINDOW_TYPE_IMAGE

For things for forms

WINDOW_FORM_BUTTON,vector size,string value
WINDOW_FORM_ONE_LINE_TEXTBOX,string value
WINDOW_FORM_MULTI_LINE_TEXTBOX,integer size,string value
WINDOW_FORM_CECKBOXS,list values
WINDOW_FORM_RADIOBUTTONS,list values
WINDOW_FORM_DROPDOWN,list values
WINDOW_FORM_TEXT,string text
WINDOW_FORM_MARQUEE,string text,integer scroll (like SCROLL_LEFT,SCROLL_UP,SCROLL_DOWN,SCROLL_RIGHT)

For things for webistes

WINDOW_WEBSITE_URL,string

For things for ads

WINDOW_AD_PICTURE,string picname
WINDOW_AD_TEXT,string text
WINDOW_AD_MARQUEE,string text,integer scroll (like SCROLL_LEFT,SCROLL_UP,SCROLL_DOWN,SCROLL_RIGHT)

For things for images

WINDOW_IMAGE_PICTURE,string name
WINDOW_IMAGE_CAPTION,string name
WINDOW_IMAGE_ROLLOVER,string image1,string image2 (rollover will be called when cursor is put over the image)
WINDOW_IMAGE_MARQUEE,string text,integer scroll (like SCROLL_LEFT,SCROLL_UP,SCROLL_DOWN,SCROLL_RIGHT)

Or just HTML on a prim

It's a good idea, but HTML on a prim, which iirc is still a planned feature, will cover all of these nice and easily

Most of these can be implemented using multiple prims, except for the text. Putting text on prims using textures is really complex and expensive on the sim.

It should be possible to get text rendered on prims client side, better than llSetText().

llApplyText(string text, integer face, vector position, integer font, vector color);
position: <x, y, size>
font: FONT_TIMES, FONT_COURIER, ...

This would only require downloading the text and a few words of data, and masking the texture of that face with the text.

As for HTML on a prim... I really hope that keeps getting deferred indefinitely.

HTML on a notecard, that's more like what the original request asked for.

I don't know, HTML on a prim would make for a better, more dynamic llApplyText(). But there needs to be some way to feed values to and get values from an HTML prim before it's useful in my eyes.

The overhead of a "gecko" (the rendering engine in Firefox) is significant... with only a few web pages open Firefox can easily use up as much RAM as Second Life.

Right now you walk into a mall and every label and button has (say) a 64x64 texture containing the text, 16 kilobytes per texture. It takes a while to download that... but it's less than the pictures.

Imagine walking into a mall with 30 stalls all using HTML on a prim for their vendors. They've probably got half as many uniquely textured prims, and they're maybe half a kilobyte of HTML at the most... but each "gecko" instance uses up 100M of RAM. You've got 3GB of shuffling while you're waiting for them to render. This is clearly not practical for more than HUD-mounted displays, and not too many of them.

Now, imagine walking into a mall with 30 stalls using llApplyText (at, say, 60 bytes downloaded per button). Better, no?

I usually have 10-30 webpages open in firefox while I run SL. I haven't really experienced much performance problems.

You obviously have a computer that's capable of running multiple SL-sized programs at once without causing problems... a lot of people don't. Plus, did you have them all _reloading_ concurrently, which is a better measure of what entering a mall like the one I described would be like.

Reloading does make things go a bit slow, but it doesn't take all that long to finish though. I'm sure LL are going to add some options like max number of pages, like there's now for particles, or something like that. Still, I agree that just a llApplyText function wouldn't be a bad idea to have too, I wonder why they've never made that.

WINDOW_IMAGE_ROLLOVER
This would need a mouseOver event in LSL. That's something I think would be nice to have. What would be really useful would to be have functions that could make HUDs as responsive and flexibe as the 3D windows in Sun's Project Looking Glass.

Hm...those form function might be too much asking. But I'll sure like the llApplyText()!

Aww....It far easier and faster than HTML-on-prim, require much less resource, lag nothing on server side, and can be implemented to look like HTML on prim as well (just use an transparent prim with text and another with textures directly behind)!

Just a wild guess here, perhaps there's just no easy way of adding it with the current graphics engine, the text would probably be rendered to a texture that would need to be combined with the prims texture, but the graphics engine doesn't currently support multiple textures per face.

That's still no reason it wouldn't be possible to add llApplyText that would make the prim textured only with text on a transparent prim as you say though. I would think it would be much less code for LL to add than XyText even.

It could bake the texture into the prim texture in the client and feed that to the graphics engine.

I quite agree about the HTML to be honest. It's an amazingly nifty feature but with great power comes great responsibility... it will need to be greatly restricted, because it will get hugely overused. Immense resource-eating banners, HTML on anything because people can't be bothered making a texture... rendering a font on a prim side would be much more useful, and nicer than ugly floating text.

Well i know both HTML and LSL pretty good but what about the people that dont know HTML? theyd have to learn a new scripting all over again...

There are free wysiwyg editors for html, so this is not an issue. And html isn't such hard to learn language.

The scripting editors for HTML tend to produce HTML that's very complex, non-portable, and LARGE.

Non-portable wouldn't be a big problem except that it's not Firefox/Gecko that they're designed for.

Use Nvu then! It's a nice and Free html editor that's mozilla based

actually, i barely use it myself, i like coding by hand

It's not my HTML I'm concerned about. I write HTML by writing a program to create the HTML I want, sometimes creating a custom language to best define the kind of HTML I want my program to create.

It's not me, it's what happens when I walk into a mall and there's 300 prims textured with stuff generated by FrontPage and ColdFusion...

I know I just speak in general But yea...that'll be horrible. 300 prims all have html face. People will immediately complain about drop in fps again.