Island Sandbox or Sandbox Island?

It seems to me that the sim name "Island Sandbox" used to appear in the map popup sim name list, and that that is what everyone called it, and that how the name appeared when you hovered the cursor over the sim in the map.

Now it shows as "Sandbox Island" along with several other sandbox sims.

When you go to the former "Island Sandbox" the sim and parcel display in the menu bar reads "Sandbox Island (PG), Island Sandbox" .

Presumably this change is due to the new combat sims. Making the names all start with Sandbox makes the sandboxes all show up in the same place. Unfortunately the display is so badly designed that the part that distinguishes one from another is not always displayed.

We now have the following sandbox sims:

Sandbox(combat) - Red Team's HQ
Sandbox(combat) - Rausch
Sandbox(combat) - Blue Team's HQ
Sandbox - Weapons testing
Sandbox Cordova
Sandbox Goguen
Sandbox Island
Sandbox Newcombe

Changing the sim names so that those which share a similar property show up together in a list is a bad idea and should not be done in the future.

It makes the distinguishing part be farther to the right and thus requires people to read the word sandbox over and over to find the sandbox they are looking for.

Scripts that used a certain sim name may be broken if the name is switched around.

Further there are a number of different properties that could be added to sim names, PG and M would be an obvious choice of categories that could be stuck at the beginning of a name in order to determine their position in a list. (An obvious but very bad choice.)

Imagine if some programmer with a misplaced love of order decided to rename the sims so as to make all the PG ones appear adjacent to each other in a list. That is the same principle involved as in changing the sandbox sim names. Wouldn't a list that had items all starting with M, then ones with PG be a sucky annoying looking list?

Then there is the category rank conflict that occurs with such fixed name based category schemes. If you try to start the sandbox sim names with "sandbox" and the PG sim names with "PG" then when you reach a PG sandbox sim the contradiction causes your avatar to freeze and smoke to come out it's ears.

The Find Places dialog should be able to isolate the sandbox sims easy enough by using sandbox as a search term. Name changing to make sims appear adjacent in an "alphabetic" sort order needs to be stopped.

are you serious?!

I agree only if they actually started to rename sims based on PG and M, which they aren't yet. I love this kind of order, where things are renamed so as to show up in lists and find it really helpful as long as it's done right.

In the case of the Sandbox sims, I think you are right that sandbox is too long of a name to stick on the begining though.

I can't believe someone is ranting about whether or not descriptive hierarchies implemented through a naming convention in a list should be used -- and arguing the wrong side.

~Ulrika~

Am I serious about what?

Am I serious that sim names should not be changed every time someone on the linden staff gets a burr in his sock?

Yes, I am serious about not wanting frivolous name changes that might make it impossible to find "Cordova" in a list without typing "Sandbox " at the beginning.

What is it that you can't tell I am serious about?

Should the so-called vehicle sims be renamed from "Brilliant" to "Vehicle Sim -(Brilliant) so they will show up together in a list?

Should the terrain type should be included in the name, so that we have "Snow Sim Bob" instead of just "Bob"?

Adding properties to the beginning of names to affect their sort order in a list of names is bad idea and should not be done at all.

absolutely!

That was a rant?

coco

Databases have distinct fields for different properties instead of just one field with all the properties thrown in for a reason.

The way to winnow and sort lists based on the values of properties is to have checkboxes for filtering and explicit sorting by property values.

i know sue, i am so distraught! i can't find peking or bombay on a map!

The combat sandboxes have long names that are somewhat unwieldy, and perhaps even trickier to hyperlink to. I haven't had success with:

O, here's a simple idea: redesign the map screen so the column for showing region names can be wider—either that or they'll scroll dynamically like a marquee sign to indicate there's more text.

Part of how this will be practical will shine in 1.7, because of the new autocomplete function.

Wish we could filter places by PG/M too, it's odd you can get it by hovering mouse over a square but not on any global level.

I must say, I like that idea.
I like that they renamed the sandboxes that way as well. The only sandbox sim name I knew was Cordova. How would a new user know what sims are sandboxes?

Seems alot more new user friendly to me.

Aren't Sandbox Island and Island Sandbox two different sims? I seem to recall one of them is the Teen Grid sandbox.

Yes, the situation will change a bit in 1.7.

The name list should be wide enough to hold the names, ideally. If that is not practical then instead of scrolling fields the sim name could wrap to the next line with a slight indent to show that the indent words are continuations of the long sim name above. That would allow you to see the complete name without extra mouse or keyboard action.

In the 1.7 map sim name list with the autocomplete you can't find Cordova by typing in Cordova, you have to type in Sandbox. Instead of looking for the string typed in anywhere in the sim name, it starts from the beginning.

So if you think of Cordova as a free build sim instead of a sandbox sim you are out of luck.

The new map list won't let you see a complete list of sim names, will it?

I suppose some of you would like to have the words Island and Mainland added to the sim names.

What this combined with having "Sandbox" added to the names of the sandbox sims would do to "Island Sandbox" I don't know, but somewhere there would probably be an android with smoke coming out of it's ears.

And I guess the sims that aren't sandbox sims should have "Not Sandbox" added at the beginning of their names too.

When sims are rented the word rented should, I suppose, be added to the name of the sim, and when they aren't rented, "For Rent" could show up.

I guess in a customer database the customer's addresses could be stored at the beginning of their name field to make it easy to have the customer name list appear sorted by address.

Not that I know of, and this poses some problems of its own as well.

Ryan and I noticed this problem last week, and we're looking into how to best get this fixed.

Ideally, I'd love to see the Region pulldown list on the world map automatically have a width of the longest named Region. That way we can continue to name things in a way that lets people easily find things without truncating names.

Thanks for the feedback about this!

That would be cool! But you know some nimrod will buy an island sim and name it Supercalifragilisticexpialidoceous Island, just for spite.

The Find dialog box could have a Sim tab added to it, Linden sims could have descriptions written by Lindens. This would allow searching by sim name, or by words in the description. Describing Cordova as "sandbox sim, free building area" would enable people to find it and the other sandbox sims by typing in either sandbox, free building, or building area, or the sim name.

Having list item names that are too long wrap to next line takes care of that problem without having the width of the list take up too much on the screen.

Also, it's "ious", not "eous"; it should be "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Assuming one is talking about the word from the Mary Poppins book and not some independently contrived word which resembles "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" only by coincidence.