Is Editing Object Contents (almost) Totally Broken?

I'm am getting SO angry it is ridiculous. I have spent the last hour trying to update the contents of my in-world vendor server (which all my vendors get their info from). It contains approximately 30 assorted items (notecards, scripts, boxes, etc) but I assume my problems would be the same for any object containing a similar number of other items.

So I need to remove a couple of objects, add a couple more and edit a notecard.... Easy! or at least it used to be....

Deleting items seems OK, providing I wait for the contents to update after a few seconds before doing anything else (which has been the case for some time and I'm used to it now).

Adding items is where the problems begin, the contents do not update at all quickly, resulting in me adding multiple copies of the same item (maybe I'm impatient, but i'm sure the wait is longer than it was previously).

So I edit the notecard, it opens and I save changes. Then i tell my vendor to update.... but it still gets the old info, not the updated one, even though I *did* save changes. If i try to check the notecard again it appears blank. After a LONG wait, maybe 10 mins or more, the saved notecard finally seems to 'save'.

Whilst I was waiting for the saved changes to actually appear saved in-world I tried some other stuff in the servers inventory, I needed to delete another object in there, so I got it selected and hit delete, but the server itself was deleted, even though the focus in my client was clearly on the objects contents window.

I have gone through this whole process twice now, and have now been waiting about 15 minutes for an edited and saved notecard in the servers contents to actually appear edited and saved when opened.

I hope that all makes sense, but i'm becoming incoherently wound up... I'm guessing this is a new feature introduced to reduce the asset server load, but cashing out of SL has never seemed such an appealing option, or maybe i'll just sell on SL exchange...

Sounds like classic asset server problems to me. Sorry to hear all that. The one bit of good news i can give you is that trash never auto-deletes so anything you accidentally remove is actually saved for you for eternity. Not much else you can do about any of that except not play during those times. I guaruntee you won't experience bugs if you don't log in! Hahah

Yeah, I got that too.

Also, let's say you put in a new notecard to replace the old notecard which was in the notecard-giver with a note-card-giver script. Because something doesn't update or a packet is lost or a server asset is cranky or what-have-you, if you delete the old thing before you put in the new thing, or if you delete the old thing TOO SOON after the new thing is put in, the *entire object disappears*. This kept happening to me. It wasn't in lost-and-found. I don't understand what happened to me or if I did something wrong so I didn't bug-report it. I've had it repeatedly happen where taking the contents out of a prim, like the script or the card, can make the entire object disappear.

This is one reason why I never released my central server vendor system months and months ago - it was just too infuriating to update it with the broken way in which object contents are dealt with. Of course it was a problem with the existing vendors I made as well, which is again one of the reasons I pulled them. It's been like this for a long time now and I don't actually think LL believe it's a bug, just the way it works now.

It's totally infuriating, unpredictable and unintuitive.

I've noticed that any object that is actively scripted, even running a timer, or sensor pings, has the nasty habit of 'refreshing' the object contents, unselecting what was selected, moving the contents list back to the top (VERY annoying for objects containing lots of stuff), things like that. Of course, if you have something in the object contents selected, and hit delete as it refreshes, you'll nuke the physical object instead. Grr. This is why I almost -never- use the delete key on the keyboard when deleting object contents. Always, always right-click and delete.

I dunno if this is related or not, but it sounds similar...

That can sometimes happen if you click on the "Delete" button on the keyboard while trying to delete any of the contents, instead of right-clicking and selecting delete. The system has bugs that are appearing now as well and weren't there before. I've had objects disappear when touched (though the script inside didn't ask for that to happen) and have also had objects reappear after being deleted a few seconds before from the inventory.

I will be following this advice in the future.... I'm glad to know i'm not alone with these issues., but i'm dismayed that they have existed for a long time and never been solved

Yes! Editing the contents of an object is hugely frustrating!! The list seems to reset itself every 5 seconds, so I scroll down to find something and "pop"... it goes back to the top of the list and deselects the Edit window.

Try to delete something -- it will refresh just before you hit delete and select the object instead. Poof. The entire object is deleted. (Learned the hard way to choose "Select Individual" before deleting items from a Content tab.)

Try to add something, and it will refresh as you drag from your Inventory to the Content tab, and suddenly your mouse pointer changes to a "cancel" symbol, and you have to start again... and again... and again. Just try doing this thirty or more times as you prepare a vendor and you'll want to chuck your computer out the window.

Who let this through QA?

Yes, it is goofed. Here is what I have found. If the object is doing any updates, then the root prim's contents will act goofy like this - doing updates each time there is any type of update. This is like texture anims or motion, or basically anything that trips an update. You want a quiescent object. Depending on your setup, you can just turn off the root script and you can update the contents at your leisure. Is it goofed? Yeah. Is it necessary to keep the contents of the object free of problems, probably. But, at least you can work around it. BTW - if you are sitting on that object, and you have an attachment that is updating, you get the same situation.

hehe - I used the word 'quiescent' and 'goofy' in the same thought.