Chatting in public world

Wow... someone actually uses bubble chat?

Mari

i'm another one who gets frustrated at people who have no hand typeing on. i find Mysti tool helps a little tho as anyone typeing will have a T next to there name on the HUD

-Crunch

The T will only show up if it's an AO covering up the typing. If the PlayTypingAnim thing is used, the server doesn't know that the agent is typing, and llGetAgentInfo (and so MystiTool) can't report on it.

Seconded, Mac.. OMG her post had me laughing so bad-- i see this sea of little avi hand puppets.... ever been to Disney World in the rain? They sell these yellow plastic rain ponchos... as you gaze across the wide ocean of yellow Easter egg Mickey Mouses.... Nw imagine a million (or 65 K) avies... all with their left hand up raised - and chatting like mad.. Sounds like a plan

I'm with you Max. That's one of the first things I did when I reinstalled SL. Turned it off. It annoys me no end.

O gotta say I am glad I finally spotted this thread. I turned off the chatting animation a long time ago for during a photo shoot and couldnt for the LIFE of me figure out where to turn it back on!! Thanks! >.<

The typing animation is inane.

I always have it off, so does Bec. When either of us is talking, the Avi bobbles its head... easy to tell when someone is typing. I don't see a problem.

right and it looks silly very noobish looking and besideds if somebody walks up and says hi and walks off is usualy a good sign of an impasent person who i would not want to hang with anyways

I have mine turned off, I mean seriously my av is supposed to be talking not typing into a keyboard - thats what the RL me does. Talk about immersion breaking.
As for visual clues well I have seen many av's stuck in the typing gesture, you think that they are saying something long, deep and meaningful only to realise after a while that they are stuck in the anim or crashing.
If there was a non intrusive, foolproof way of indicating that a user was actually typing something now then I would be all for it.
Until then I, like a lot of people, try to talk in short sentences and put ellipses to indicate more is to follow.

If you leave your cursor in the window you will display the "SoandSo is typing" message. If you click out and deactivate the window (it looks more transparent), the message goes away. At least that's the way I understand it...

I only keep open the small chat line - not a huge chat window, you don't get any "person A is typing..." for that. There are too many windows anyway, its almost like they don't want you to see their lovely 3D world behind them.

Yep I find it annoying when there's no clue people are responding, so usually interupt their 8 line answer with another question or say bye and walk off, depending on the situation.

I am not certain how my partner would react to that one but I like the idea. A puppet or something that looks like that green frog's mouth. Partner always says I am opinionated and type furiously - dunno where he gets that idea from ...

What Max says...

Maybe you folks who can't wait for someone to spit out a full thought should cut back on the caffeine a bit?

That said, I will respond to someone with a "Yes?" or "OK" before going off on a longwinded reply, just so they know I am listening to them. But if I can't hold their concentration any better than that afterward, we probably don't have much to say to each other anyway.

I use bubble chat too. Chat bubbles are good just for that, to know if someone is talking when their typing animation is off. But I read the full conversation in chat window. So I don't have the problem that I don't know if someone is talking or not, if ones typing animation is off.

That's an odd comment.

Mine's off.

I went through a long evolution to get there.

First, I used a typing gesture replacement called "FemTalk". It supposedly has you gesticulate with your hands in a feminine way. I had several people tell me they liked it, but to me, it made me look sort of like a demented Italian. (Better than a sock puppet, though...)

Then I got an AO that has high priority animations that override the typing anim. That was fine...except for times when I turned it off. Suddenly, the typing hands were back, and it looked even more jarring since it usually wasn't there.

So I just switched it off. Anyone who can't wait around for my next line of deathless prose can just go Ruth themselves.

(There is another gesturing anim out there I found once, that looks more realistic than FemTalk, but I didn't buy it because I already had the high-priority AO. If the AO maker ever offers an upgrade with lower priorities, I might consider trying it.)

I turned that typing animation off, because 2 things: 1- It looks silly to me. 2- Every time I was at an event, the music stops every time the typing animation started.

Now as some others have stated, I usually say "ok" or something like that to make you see I am listening, but if you cannot wait for my 2 or 3 line response, then we really should not be talking, because obviously you're more interested in what YOU have to say about whatever subject than my opinions. And those that say that without the animation you end up talking over the other person's response....have you ever been in a place with 3 or more people chatting? The conversation naturally gets like that, only that we have the ANNOYANCE of the little typing sound that comes with the animation, and that disrupts the music at the place.

And Lindal: I love your "deathless prose"

I am soooo glad you got rid of that Animation. It wasn't working for you.

Yay! I can post in this thread again!

It is really very easy ....

... to let someone know that you are responding to them even though your contribution may be a bit long and take a moment or two to compose.

I am going to dowlnoad some animation software and attempt to create this. If successful, I will give it away for free and name it after you. ... Ive seen anis that use hand movements, it can't be impossible.

Oh god I want the hand puppet!

I have one that I don't use because it always looks like some melodramatic thespian thing on stage Now I just stand there looking lost in thought - til my words materialize out of thin air

This is really twisting and misrepresenting my viewpoint. If I fail to wait for a lengthy response that I don't know is coming, it is not because I am more interested in what I have to say; it is because I have no idea that there is a response coming. So I mistakenly conclude that perhaps my previous comment wasn't understood; that perhaps the person I am speaking to didn't know I was done; that perhaps the person I am speaking to isn't interested in the topic enough to respond and I should talk about something else.

The point is only that without cues, conversation becomes a little more challenging.



I am not talking about crowd situations in which large numbers of people are having rapid, non-linear chat. I am talking about two- or three-person conversations. And please don't say "take it to IM." That an interchange is happening between two people does not necessarily mean no one else is present or that IM is the appropriate medium for the exchange. I run a cafe and work very hard not to exclude anyone who is present even if they are not active participants in the conversation.

I don't have the problem with music cutting off that you have, I'm sorry that is a problem for you.

Gah, I can't believe that because I expressed a preference for some FEEDBACK in a conversational setting, I have to defend myself against accusations of narcissism and being "over-caffeinated" and whatnot. I spend MOST of my time in SL trying to engage others and make them feel welcome and comfortable in my cafe by engaging them in chat. It really gets up my nose that in just talking about my experiences doing that gets me this kind of response.

Bottom line is everyone is of course free to configure their avatars however they wish, I am just expressing my own personal preference for one way over the other - without, incidentally, accusing or insulting people whose preference differs from my own!

I will also add that, because the gods of irony freaking HATE me, that I recently got around - finally - to putting some non-default stands in my AO, only to find out that some of them override the typing animation and others do not. This freaking sucks. They all came from the same place (Abranimations) and I am honestly really surprised that they have different priorities.

So to veer a little off topic, is there a way to know an animation priority before you buy? And, wouldn't it be nice if the users of animations could set their priorities?