Second Life Forums Archive - More comprehensive SL addresses

Abigail Merlin

Child av on the lose

Join date: 25 Mar 2007

Posts: 777

11-13-2007 00:56

did a bit of figuring with the URI and secondlife:// and the way it works now confirms to the RFC becouse the rest of the URI does not have to be a domain name or ip adress.
A good exsample is the file:// identifier this can't even be a domain name but has to point to a place in the directory tree, this can be a drive under windows or logical reference under unix.

Haravikk Mistral

Registered User

Join date: 8 Oct 2005

Posts: 2,482

11-13-2007 02:17

From: Abigail Merlin

did a bit of figuring with the URI and secondlife:// and the way it works now confirms to the RFC becouse the rest of the URI does not have to be a domain name or ip adress.
A good exsample is the file:// identifier this can't even be a domain name but has to point to a place in the directory tree, this can be a drive under windows or logical reference under unix.

What comes after the :// (or more precisely just the :, // is an http convention that isn't actually required) is entirely up to the program that the protocol (http, ftp, secondlife, mailto, etc.) points to.

In my case I'm doing it with phone-numbers, so I can have a URI like:
dial:+44 20 1234-5678:Haravikk Mistral

My program might map to the 'dial' protocol, now when someone clicks that link, my program will receive the full URI and it can do as it pleases with the various parts. In my case I simply double-check the 'dial' part, then grab the phone-number and name to display a pop-up on screen.

As such the SL URIs can have absolutely anything after the secondlife: part.

_____________________

Computer (Mac Pro):
2 x Quad Core 3.2ghz Xeon
10gb DDR2 800mhz FB-DIMMS
4 x 750gb, 32mb cache hard-drives (RAID-0/striped)
NVidia GeForce 8800GT (512mb)

Gomez Bracken

Who said that??

Join date: 12 Apr 2007

Posts: 479

11-13-2007 03:41

I have a idea...

The current TLD .sl (allocated to country Sierra Leone) does not seem to be getting much (if any) use...

Maybe an agreement could be put in place with the national registry to be able to sell .sl domain names to SL residents - much like Tuvalu does with .tv

That way SL could implement proper email to IM and be able to map locations with fully qualified domain names....

Gomez

_____________________

Temptations Club and Adult resort
http://www.temptations-club.com
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fort%20Grant/170/54/53
***
SL Wedding Show Mall - The top SL Wedding specialists all under one roof
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Medvedgrad/136/33/36
***
Join the group "Zindra Landowners Alliance" for updates and information about Zindra! - http://zindrala.co.cc for more information!

Learjeff Innis

musician & coder

Join date: 27 Nov 2006

Posts: 817

11-13-2007 15:47

From: Phoenix Psaltery

It isn't that LL owns the secondlife:// address. That's not an address, it's a protocol tag, like http:// or ftp://.

Try entering, for example, secondlife://ahern/128/128/0/ in Firefox. On a machine that has SL installed it'll start SL and take you to that location. On a machine that doesn't have SL installed, you'll get an error message.

Haravik is right, the addressing conventions are up to the identified protocol.

And LL does indeed own (or at least, totally control) the address space for the "secondlife:" protocol. Do you think they registered "Ahern" with some public addressing authority? Nope. Do you think you could create and register an address of your own? Nope.

When SL opens up the server side as they say they plan to do, they'll have to figure out how to handle address registration, but it'll be LL who decides, all by themselves. They may take input from others, but they don't have to. "secondlife:" is not an open protocol (yet) and there is no public authority (yet). Things are quite different for protocols that specify IP addresses, such as "http:" and "ftp:".

Learjeff Innis

musician & coder

Join date: 27 Nov 2006

Posts: 817

11-13-2007 15:54

From: Haravikk Mistral

I've been doing work on this kind of thing, where clicking a link on a web-page makes something happen within a program.

http://, ftp:// etc. etc. are all hooks. They are just names that allow your OS to look-up a program to handle the rest of the URL (the IP part and so-on).
So somewhere within the evil, evil Windows registry is an entry for http, and it will point to your web-browser, so that whenever a link starting with http is clicked, it will open your web-browser and pass-in the URL.

Similarly, secondlife: at the start of the URL (or to be more accurate, URI, a URI being the structure of a link) will map to Second Life on your computer, so any time a link starting with secondlife: is clicked, it will open.

You can define any you like, for example, with one quick registry edit on a Windows machine (don't know how to do it on others yet) I could define a haravikk: 'hook', which will open up some specific program (probably a really, really cool one =).

Important thing to note though is that http and ftp etc. are also network protocols, which complicates things a little, but can be ignored for this discussion.

If you're familiar with HTML then the more direct comparison is the "mailto:" prefix which can be used to tell someone's e-mail client to open and create a new message with some pre-specified settings, ready for you to fill in.

Actually, there's a difference between "how it works on your computer" and "what it means". The protocol specifier selects a protocol, and it's up to the open standards (if any) for that protocol to define how the rest of the URL is structured. The idea behind open systems is that based on the standards, anyone can write software to conform and interoperate with other implementations. So, while it's true that the protocol hook just causes a program to run, and that program parses the URL, in order for actual communications to take place in a multi-vendor world, the stuff after the protocol tag has to be well-defined for that protocol. If your program interprets it differently from someone else's, then the link won't do the same thing on the two computers -- or even go the same place. The idea is to try to avoid that. But in the case of SL, it's not open, so your summary is correct.

Not that anyone cares!

Draco18s Majestic

Registered User

Join date: 19 Sep 2005

Posts: 2,744

11-14-2007 09:54

From: Haravikk Mistral

User CP >> Edit Options >> Show Avatars

And because of all the little tweaks I have to do from the default, how many people do you think:
a) have an avatar?
b) also have show avatars selected?

More comprehensive SL addresses
Abigail Merlin Child av on the lose Join date: 25 Mar 2007 Posts: 777	11-13-2007 00:56 did a bit of figuring with the URI and secondlife:// and the way it works now confirms to the RFC becouse the rest of the URI does not have to be a domain name or ip adress. A good exsample is the file:// identifier this can't even be a domain name but has to point to a place in the directory tree, this can be a drive under windows or logical reference under unix.
Haravikk Mistral Registered User Join date: 8 Oct 2005 Posts: 2,482	11-13-2007 02:17 From: Abigail Merlin did a bit of figuring with the URI and secondlife:// and the way it works now confirms to the RFC becouse the rest of the URI does not have to be a domain name or ip adress. A good exsample is the file:// identifier this can't even be a domain name but has to point to a place in the directory tree, this can be a drive under windows or logical reference under unix. What comes after the :// (or more precisely just the :, // is an http convention that isn't actually required) is entirely up to the program that the protocol (http, ftp, secondlife, mailto, etc.) points to. In my case I'm doing it with phone-numbers, so I can have a URI like: dial:+44 20 1234-5678:Haravikk Mistral My program might map to the 'dial' protocol, now when someone clicks that link, my program will receive the full URI and it can do as it pleases with the various parts. In my case I simply double-check the 'dial' part, then grab the phone-number and name to display a pop-up on screen. As such the SL URIs can have absolutely anything after the secondlife: part. _____________________ Computer (Mac Pro): 2 x Quad Core 3.2ghz Xeon 10gb DDR2 800mhz FB-DIMMS 4 x 750gb, 32mb cache hard-drives (RAID-0/striped) NVidia GeForce 8800GT (512mb)
Gomez Bracken Who said that?? Join date: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 479	11-13-2007 03:41 I have a idea... The current TLD .sl (allocated to country Sierra Leone) does not seem to be getting much (if any) use... Maybe an agreement could be put in place with the national registry to be able to sell .sl domain names to SL residents - much like Tuvalu does with .tv That way SL could implement proper email to IM and be able to map locations with fully qualified domain names.... Gomez _____________________ Temptations Club and Adult resort http://www.temptations-club.com http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fort%20Grant/170/54/53 * SL Wedding Show Mall - The top SL Wedding specialists all under one roof http://slurl.com/secondlife/Medvedgrad/136/33/36 * Join the group "Zindra Landowners Alliance" for updates and information about Zindra! - http://zindrala.co.cc for more information!
Learjeff Innis musician & coder Join date: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 817	11-13-2007 15:47 From: Phoenix Psaltery It isn't that LL owns the secondlife:// address. That's not an address, it's a protocol tag, like http:// or ftp://. Try entering, for example, secondlife://ahern/128/128/0/ in Firefox. On a machine that has SL installed it'll start SL and take you to that location. On a machine that doesn't have SL installed, you'll get an error message. Haravik is right, the addressing conventions are up to the identified protocol. And LL does indeed own (or at least, totally control) the address space for the "secondlife:" protocol. Do you think they registered "Ahern" with some public addressing authority? Nope. Do you think you could create and register an address of your own? Nope. When SL opens up the server side as they say they plan to do, they'll have to figure out how to handle address registration, but it'll be LL who decides, all by themselves. They may take input from others, but they don't have to. "secondlife:" is not an open protocol (yet) and there is no public authority (yet). Things are quite different for protocols that specify IP addresses, such as "http:" and "ftp:".
Learjeff Innis musician & coder Join date: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 817	11-13-2007 15:54 From: Haravikk Mistral I've been doing work on this kind of thing, where clicking a link on a web-page makes something happen within a program. http://, ftp:// etc. etc. are all hooks. They are just names that allow your OS to look-up a program to handle the rest of the URL (the IP part and so-on). So somewhere within the evil, evil Windows registry is an entry for http, and it will point to your web-browser, so that whenever a link starting with http is clicked, it will open your web-browser and pass-in the URL. Similarly, secondlife: at the start of the URL (or to be more accurate, URI, a URI being the structure of a link) will map to Second Life on your computer, so any time a link starting with secondlife: is clicked, it will open. You can define any you like, for example, with one quick registry edit on a Windows machine (don't know how to do it on others yet) I could define a haravikk: 'hook', which will open up some specific program (probably a really, really cool one =). Important thing to note though is that http and ftp etc. are also network protocols, which complicates things a little, but can be ignored for this discussion. If you're familiar with HTML then the more direct comparison is the "mailto:" prefix which can be used to tell someone's e-mail client to open and create a new message with some pre-specified settings, ready for you to fill in. Actually, there's a difference between "how it works on your computer" and "what it means". The protocol specifier selects a protocol, and it's up to the open standards (if any) for that protocol to define how the rest of the URL is structured. The idea behind open systems is that based on the standards, anyone can write software to conform and interoperate with other implementations. So, while it's true that the protocol hook just causes a program to run, and that program parses the URL, in order for actual communications to take place in a multi-vendor world, the stuff after the protocol tag has to be well-defined for that protocol. If your program interprets it differently from someone else's, then the link won't do the same thing on the two computers -- or even go the same place. The idea is to try to avoid that. But in the case of SL, it's not open, so your summary is correct. Not that anyone cares!
Draco18s Majestic Registered User Join date: 19 Sep 2005 Posts: 2,744	11-14-2007 09:54 From: Haravikk Mistral User CP >> Edit Options >> Show Avatars And because of all the little tweaks I have to do from the default, how many people do you think: a) have an avatar? b) also have show avatars selected?

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