Some basic inventory questions

Hello. Can you help me with some basic Inventory questions please ???

1) There is a folder called 'body parts' which is currently empty, what should I keep in here ?

2) What is the connection between 'calling cards' and my friends (contacts) list. If I remove a friend do I need to delete the card as well ? Can I send someone my card as an alternative to 'making friends' ?

3) There are folders for 'animations', 'gestures', and 'scripts'. What are the differences between these?

Thanks as always.

FH

The folders you are describing are default system folders. I believe some of the original avatar shapes, skins, clothing, etc, came in these folders.

You don't have to put anything in there for SL to work correctly as far as I have found. I have made my own folders with names that make sense to me, just as I do on my computer. However, you can't delete these system folders, so maybe I should be using them. They're just not organized in a way that works for me.

I have nothing in Body Parts, but I assume it's for eyes, hair, and genitalia.

Animations are how you walk, sit, dance, fly. Most people's are in an animation overrider and they can be in this folder or not. Your choice.

Gestures are like macros, where you can press one key and play a brief animation or make a sound, or make a line of text chat, or a combination of all the above. They can be useful for waving Hi to people, but can be anoying when they fill the screen with useless chatter.

Calling cards are a bit obsolete some people say. You get one whenever you make a friend. Most people ignore them. I found mine useful when my friends list wasn't working properly.

1. The Body Parts folder is for things like shapes, skins, eyes.

2. Calling cards are automatically exchanged when people friend each other. You don;t need to delete any of them if you don't want to. They are not auto-deleted when you remove someone from your friends list.

3. Animations are animations When you get on a poseball your avatar becomes animated - or goes into a pose. Scripts are programmes. Gestures are gestures, such as laugh, cry, whatever.

i believe skins and shapes that you create will be saved to this folder.

a calling card is more like a business card. you can keep contact details with people this way without adding them to your friends list. note that if you add somebody to your friends list notecards are automatically exchanged.
amongst many it is actually considered a sign of higher evolution to offer a calling card to new aquantances and to reserve frienships for people you know better.
they both seem to function much the same, but calling cards dont give you obvious online notifications or extended options such as 'can edit my items', 'can see me on the map' etc.

an animation is a simple animation, while a gesture is (usually) an animation that is triggered by an event, such as typing a command, and often accompanied by chatter.
an example of a gesture would be typing /hi and having the av say 'hi' while taking deep bow or salute or something.
a script is something unrelated. scripts are more like 'programming code' and are what make many things in sl do something other than sit there static. a door that opens when you click it will contain a script for example.

-Your shape
-Your eyes
-I'd suggest keeping your skin in here too, though that one is on the border between bodyparts and clothes
-I personally also keep a small selection of attachments here, the most important, which I have equiped 99% of the time, like radar, couples animator, multi gadget. This folder is very conveniently near the top of your inventory list, so that's why I put attachments that are almost an integral part of my avatar there.

When you become friends with someone, you automatically exchange callingcards. If a friend comes online, his or her callingcard will also "light up"
No, it will just be a more or less useless piece of inventory, unless you still want to be able to contact that person without resorting to the search feature.
Yes, but the callingcard won't work as an online indicator then.


As explained:
-Animations are things that "animate" your avatar, for example to wave, to jump, to dance, do naughty things, etcetera.
-You didn't mention your "poses" folder, but poses are basically the same thing, except that a pose does not involve moving limbs, while animations do. So poses are stills (ideal for photography!) while animations involve movement.
-Gestures are combinations of sounds, animations/poses and often also some text output in chat. Basically allowing you to activate all those three things in one time. You'll often see people in clubs yelling "Whoooo Hoooo", with a matching sound coming from your speakers. This is done by gestures, they probably typed only /whoo in chat, which the gesture replaced with text output and playing the right sound.
-Scripts are like little computer programs, that allow objects to "do" things. A door doesn't open and close on it's own, it needs a script to do that. The script records (for example) that you clicked the door, and tells the door object what to do, which is usually rotate around it's hinges to open or close.


As some very useful information: you can add more folders to your inventory, and also make subfolders, even within those default folders like "body parts" and "Gestures".
Keeping your inventory sorted well in folders and sub-folders is a very important way to keep it managable. Inventories with over 10,000 items aren't uncommon. Many new avatars reach around 7,000 items during their first week in SL already, from all the freebees everywhere. So sorting things out in folders, subfolders, sub-sub-folders etcetera right from the start will save you a lot of work later.
And yes, you can drag non-system folders into other folders, to become a subfolder there as well. Standard drag-drop system like on your computer

Like Weston, I don't really use many of the System folders that are given to us. Not only do I create my own, but I set my folder sort order to sort by name and to not always have system folders at the top. I then use various special characters at the beginning of my folder names to control the order in which they display and to force them to sort to the top of the list.

Note - your inventory can quickly become a vast wasteland where you can get lost and never find anything. Find a naming and organizing scheme that works for you and keep things organized from the very beginning.

(this from the gal with thousands and thousands and thousands of dresses in an inventory that is always needing more organizing)

If you put a little lime* in with the body parts, they will decompose quicker, and lessen the chance of being caught.

*The mineral, not the fruit.

Gah, you are such a noob. "I believe".

actually skins and shapes will go where ever you decide to create them, and not necessarily into the body parts folder (for instance you can right click on the objects folder and choose create body part, new skin (or shape) and it will make the new skin, (or shape) and it will be located in the objects folder

Edited to add, but, if you are given a body part, (shape, skin, eyes, or hair (system hair) and they are not in a folder, they will default to the body parts folder.


calling cards can be useful for doing conference chats, (chatting to more than one friend in the same window, without using a group) you can also use the calling cards to sort your friends into business, family, friend, etc. This is helpful if you have many different types of contacts (and I wish I had done it when I first started). This is the only way to sort the contacts list. I wish we could do it via the friends list, but we can't

you can vote for that ability on the JIRA here

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-890

1) There is a folder called 'body parts' which is currently empty, what should I keep in here ?

You can keep whatever you wish to put in there, the folders are mainly used as a default sorting mechanism (for example, someone sends you a skin, the skin is not in a folder or packed in a box, it will default to the body parts folder)

2) What is the connection between 'calling cards' and my friends (contacts) list. If I remove a friend do I need to delete the card as well ? Can I send someone my card as an alternative to 'making friends' ?

A calling cards is automatically given to you when you and someone else accept friendship. They are not automatically removed when you delete a friend from the contacts list, however you can delete the calling card anytime you want. Yes you can send someone a calling card, however you need to be standing next to them, right click on them and choose more, then give calling card. (I think I have that right, been at least 2 years since I handed out a calling card LOL)


3) There are folders for 'animations', 'gestures', and 'scripts'. What are the differences between these?

animations are just what they say they are, animations, they make your avatar move (or stand in a specific pose), gestures are a combination of animations, text, and sound, or can be just one of those things, it is basically as described above, a macro. Scripts are used to make things react a specific way. Open a script to get an idea of what it is