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Notecard Creation from LSL

Static Sprocket
Registered User
Join date: 10 Feb 2006
Posts: 157
04-12-2006 10:44
Being the one that asked the question during the town hall, I'd like to point out that although providing more robust and faster Object to Object communication, as well as an object data store will provide a solution to many of the reasons why scripters ask for LSL Notecard generation -- it does not however address all of them.

Obj to Obj communication makes it so that scripters won't need to serialize data to a notecard, so that it can be transferred between objects... This is good.

Providing an Object data store so that object settings, configuration and data doesn't have to be serialized to notecards or outside system... Is also good.


But what about people that want to create notecards to give specifically to users, for human consumption? Vendor or Greeter objects that want to provide sales reports, or visitor logs? I recently provided the scripting for vote boxes for a Boat Show, I provided notecards with vote tabulations to the event organizers and will be providing them to the contestants -- but I had to have the vote boxes push that data out of the system, where I could then cut & paste it back into Second Life to make notecards.

If Linden Labs wants Second Life to be a viable platform for general use, there must be a mechanism to create files for human consumption from inside LSL and accessible through the Second Life client. Forcing someone out of the Second Life client to a website to get a report, or sending them an email is not enough. Right now the closest thing we have to "text files" are notecards and as such it is a logical extension that LSL should be able to write to them.

From: someone
Notecard creation is not currently a possibility because every notecard create and every notecard edit would require a new asset. This would be simply too much asset system load.


If the current asset system is incapable of handling the additional load, then perhaps providing a mechanism for local client storage of notecards would be a better solution then treating them as normal assets?


So my question is, will Linden Lab provide a mechanism for LSL to dynamically create files for human consumption (viewing) inside of the Second Life client? And if so, is it on the roadmap for implementation this year?


P.S. I've been very tempted to provide an employment opportunity to people in SL as an alternative to Camping Chairs, as a giant typing pool to allow LSL to "write to" notecards...
Kelly Linden
Linden Developer
Join date: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 896
04-12-2006 15:24
Notecards as they exist today (as assets like textures, objects etc) will not be creatable by script.

There are other features that may be maleable to what you want:
html / Mozilla in the client: It is highly desirable that there be lsl calls to open browser windows to specific urls. This can be used in combination with an outside server to format and display data as in your example. A natural extension of this is allowing the lsl script to specify not just the url, but the actual html/text to be displayed. This more closely matches what you describe. One primary concern with notecard creation is fully automated asset creation, allowing an open webpage to be saved as an asset (be it 'notecard' or something else) by the viewer of the notecard may be a possibility for consideration, but has not yet been considered to my knowledge.

http out: This will ease the process of getting data out of SL and lsl. While it won't bring the data in, it could also be used in conjunction with the above to good effect.

Both of the above features are 'on the roadmap for implementation this year'.
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- Kelly Linden