change the name when typing '/me'

As we all know, when you type '/me', your full name is entered, and people use it all the time as part of emoting and describing what their character is thinking and doing.

But is there any way to change what '/me' enters? For example, instead of first name - second name, it might be nice to have just your first name. Or you could use a nickname.

Any ideas?

Threre is a way to do this, but to make it work you can't use /me.

First, wear a scripted attachment. It could be as simple as your basic box, as long as it cannot be seen (or if it can, make it look like it's a normal part of whatever avatar or your avatar's clothing that you're wearing).

Put in a listener on a non-zero channel. One example could be using your RL zip code.

Type whatever you want to say on that channel. For example if the channel is 42581, then type /42581 is typing an emotion.

In the listen event handler, have it repeat what it heard prefaced by /me. Like if the variable name is message, then do llSay(0,"/me " + message);

Then name that scripted item to whatever you want it to be. If you want your nickname to be Jake, then name it Jake.

Then it would come out like this:

Jake is typing an emotion.

Thanks a lot - that sounds a bit technical but certainly do-able. The bit you lost me on came at the start: 'Put in a listener '

What is a listener?

A listener is a script contain a listen event. In it's simplest form, you could do it like this:

CHANNEL = 10; //doesn't matter which channel, as long it's non-zero

default
{
. . .state_entry()
. . .{
. . . . .// listen on CHANNEL for owner's voice only
. . . . .llListen( CHANNEL, "", llGetOwner(), "" );

. . .}

. . .listen( integer channel, string name, key id, string message )
. . .{
. . . . .// repeat back what they say on chat channel
. . . . .llSay(0, message);
. . .}

}

(strings of dots are just for formatting)

Anything you say on channel 10 (in this case) would be repeated back by the scripted object. If you called the object "A genius", you could say stuff like:

A genius: I sure am a genius!

Objects can 'emote' under their name, but that would involve deciding on a particular string of characters to trigger the emote. If the script detected them, it could chop them out of the string and replace them with "/me". Or you could just have it emote everything it repeats, by changing the last statement to:

llSay(0, "/me " + message);

So "/10jumps up and down" would come out as "A genius jumps up and down"


By the way, objects 'speak' in a different coloured text to avatars (green by default) to stop people spoofing someone else's identity. I've noticed that many people tune-out green text, because it often just contains system messages from scripted items, automated store greetings and spam from talking body-parts, so when using a renamer like this, you might find yourself being ignored.

Or you could just get this...

https://uncensored.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=225189

Thanks for info and links. The emoter would do the trick, and the script info will help me a lot. But it's an excellent point about the green text. Because of that issue, I don't think I would want to go down that route. (I ignore green text myself, by and large).

I can see now that there's a issue here around people pretending to be other people, with all sorts of griefing implications.

It's a shame you can't shorten it to just your first name, however. Using both names sometimes seems very formal, when you're with friends. But clearly, it's not really possible.

If any Lindens see this - could it not be made possible under the debug menu somehow?

Just thought i'd point out that if you an RLV-enabled viewer for any reason, you can set up a /me redirect to a channel (where you have one of the above scripted listeners).

You still have to put up with green-coloured text of course, but it saves having to mess around with '/12345 is typing an emote' or similar, and just use '/me is typing an emote' as normal.

Of course, if you'd never use any other aspect of RLV, its a bit of overkill, but thought i'd mention it.

You can also do this with Emerald, RLV-enabled or not. In the Communicate window there's a box to set the channel you are speaking on.

Is that all chat, or just your emotes?

The Emerald ability to automatically speak on a channel sounds useful (especially when testing or configuring scripts), but the RLV-setting I was speaking of just affects emotes.

Chat for certain, not so sure about emotes. So useful for different things, I guess. I've never tried mixing the two and setting each to different channels... might have odd results