Export to XML

I agree with Kex. It should be possible to export stuff to external media, eg XML.

There's no security problems here as long as you're only allowed to export stuff to which you have full permissions, ie:
- you got to have mod permissions
- you got to have copy permissions
- you got to have transfer permissions

As long as all of these are the case, there is no security problem with exporting to external media, because you're allowed to dupe and mod anyway

Azelda

Edit: I dont agree with exporting any other objects, under any other circumstance, hashed, encrypted or whatever. If it's a useless unreadable backup, it's, well, useless. If its readable, suddenly you have mod and copy access to that object, and, by extension, transfer.

Thanks Azelda, that's a much clearer way of saying it =D

This would definitely be useful for scripts, as they are easy to manually re-import back into SL (just copy and paste)...

I'm not talking about exporting land, I'm not talking about exporting rezzed objects, and I'm not talking about exporting users.

What I'm talking about is exporting and restoring items from a user's inventory.

In order to do this securely for objects where the user has copy permission, the only thing Linden Labs needs is the encryption key used to sign or encrypt the exported object, and it's quite possible for them to make thousands of copies of the key -- it's something that doesn't change over time. Every other relevant piece of data (owner, permissions, geometry, scripts, textures, etc.) can be stored in the exported file.

Assuming the exporter code always produces a valid file, the only check that needs to be done on import is to verify that the encrypted checksum of the file matches the actual checksum.

I suppose we could sign the exported object and distribute the signature with the contents. This would allow us to detect modified content and the content could survive catastrophic data loss.

This feature will not be imlemented soon.

More likely, we will have an 'export only' mode that will allow people to use SL objects as a starting point for real world CAD/CAM.


sidenote: The data loss we recently experienced was due to an unfortunate collusion of events that will never happen again.

I'm not sure why you'd need to sign something before importing it. If you have mod access to the object in the game who cares if you've modded it outside the game? It even has an advantage for Linden because if people are editing objects outside of the game it saves on bandwidth and server resources.

Azelda

Yay! =D

I hope we will be able to export all of our scripts to text files easily too, but I don't want to get carried away asking for too much at once =)

Signing objects lets you back up objects you don't have modify permissions for, such as that L$500 airplane you just purchased.

hee nm i was made moot further down than i'd read hate when i jump in like that

While export to XML and all the various import considerations are important, I would be thrilled with any kind of export.

I am voting for what has been said a couple of times already. Please allow any form of text export so that in case of loss (inside SL hardware/software, or my fat fingers), I could regenerate all (or most) of an object's/avatar's attributes and scripts. By hand. I know this sounds tedious, but if I created the objects the first time, I could do it again from such a "cue sheet".

I know this is no where near as great as a secure two-way solution, but at least I get to "keep" my objects. And the implementation is a lot simpler. Folks will then complain that it is way too simple -- but at least they will have a backup.

I don't do thread necromancy often, but this idea deserves revisiting, espcially the potential XML-ized output, if implemented.

Uh, what's the difficulty behind using ll[Get|Set]PrimitiveParams etc, generate your own XML and email it in and out of SL?
What on earth would be the big security problem here?
Nobody's talking about backing up nocopy or notransfer stuff, we're talking about backing up our own objects. Aren't we?
Heh, at the rate my hard drives fail, I'm seriously considering backing stuff up to Gmail and SL!

Anything built into the system would be an improvement over trying to do it in-world. And I should know, because I have such a thing, and it isn't so wonderful. I'd prefer to just dump an object collection out, or archive it somehow without relying on other mechanisms that just add latency to the whole thing.

Its still a valid request, I think.

I was just pointing out to phoenix et al, that since this is something we can already do, there is no problem implementing it, security, difficulty, or otherwise.
Still, I would rather have a new graphics engine, permissions system, or Havok2

I don't see whats so difficult in playing the appropriate anims to simulate ragdoll behavior present in Havok2. I'd rather have a new export system that allows local saves.

Huh, you are right, it is easy to turn an argument around using that logic.

Can you use those anims in a way that will affect the surrounding environment? Or will your arms go through a wall of solid concrete, I mean, plywood, or is it primoleum?
Still, you misread me. I wasn't arguing for or against anything.

Export to XML? You mean something like this?
http://manageddreams.com/osmpbb/viewtopic.php?t=278

I am mainly interested in producing builds offline,
My internet connection gives me too much lag to build anything significant.
(Given up on doing large builds for a while now.)

Because you can't control anims effectively from a script.

You can't even translate or rotate them except by the hack of playing them on an avatar after it's been translated and rotated using llSitTarget().

You can't apply animations to specific bones.

To simulate physical avs you'd need to set up an animation overrider with 20 or 30 separate animations for each separate limb with the right priority, and then trigger them over an over again. It'd be worse than emulating llParticleSystem() with scripted prims!

I personally don't see why it could be impossible to write a script that would output build information in XML format... It would require getting information from every attatched prim in the build, as well as the pos of each prim in reference to the origin... But I think it'd be possible. Exporting would be easy... The problem comes with importing. If you were to export a house in XML, then rez a prim, put the "import xml" script in it, and then give that script the entire XML output in a notecard, it wouldn't be hard for it to parse... the problem comes with the fact that prims can't rez basic prims on their own... We'd have to include each prim shape in the origin prim.

In the end, however, I believe that it wouldn't be impossible, only a little difficult, to create a homebrew XML import-export system to backup your builds.

(/me gets curious and emails /me to remind /me to start working on this idea...)

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As for exporting body shape... Until we've got access to scripting functions that allow us to modify/read our body's variables, there'd be no way to export shape.