Linking/Unlinking behavior

One feature I'd really like to see implemented is a slight change in the behavior of the link/unlink actions.

Scenario:

You have 2 multi-prim objects (A and B) and you want to link them to a 3rd single-prim object (C). This would be a temporary state, to aid in placing A and B. C would be later removed by 'Select Individual' > Unlink.

Currently, if you do this, A and B remain linked together.


It would be great if after that scenario, A and B would return to the previous state - not linked together (A + B), but still retain the link to all of their respective prims.

Hrm, If I catch the gist of what you are saying - you want to maintain multiple parent-child relationships between "groups" of linked prims, eh?

I agree that this would be cool. My current LSL project would be about 300 lines less code if I could do that!

BUT, here's a problem for you: How do you deal with Link Numbers, in this new way of linking? I mean, if I have a parent; and then it has a parent, what link number do you assign each one of these guys (for use with LSL functions)? What about the geometric center & center-of-mass calculations, for these "sets of sets"? And with "physical" objects, I can see a potential nightmare there...

So while I agree that this would be awesome to have, I see some significant technical difficulties in implementing it smoothly or properly.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees. i want this too. thank you.

Nested Linksets would be excellent. Although there are ways around it presently (depending on how intricate your object or script), this is something I've long-since prayed would be added to LSL.

I have often worked on projects which I would have loved to be able to keep in chunks. For example: I had a Christmas sleigh and a toy sack which either sat on the ground or in the sleigh. When I linked the toy sack to the sleigh, I could not just unlink it. I had to unlink each part of the toy sack and then reform the sack's links before removing it from the sleigh. Using the same object as another example... The toy sack had gifts in it. Therefore, each gift had to also be taken apart and put back together.

I don't know about the parent mathematics. I have no background on that to comment one way or the other. But I do know that it would be nice to be able to retain some sort of internal structure to linked objects. Maybe what is needed is a locking feature. Once you have your item linked, you could lock it to preserve the linking before linking it to another object.

I guess I feel that it is a common behavior in graphics programs to be able to group and ungroup in levels. It is an expected behavior in many programs outside of second life, such as Photoshop and MacDraw. So it certainly should be a feature that can be accomplished.

~Saebyl