Breaking andcreating links question

Why can't I break a link or create one while an av is sitting on the object?

IDGI!

a sitting av apparently is linked to the object.
reasons for asusming this:
1. sitting AV can't be moved via push scripts
2. can't turn physics on for an object with more than 32 prims, INCLUDING AVs(as 1 prim per sitting AV).
3. AV sitting on object follows the movment of that object as-if linked to it (wether physical or non-physical movement.

Yes, I know the av is linked to the object. Why cant I pop a prim off that object while the av is doing the butt-clench of death on it?

Possibly because the subsystem doesn't want to risk your avatar's link number changing. When an avatar sits on a prim, it is assigned the link number 2, and all other child prim link numbers are incremented. If you were to delete the root object, your avatar would become the root primitive, which would be bad. If you were to add an object, your avatar would get a link number > 2, which would be bad.

The Linden's link algorythims seem to expect that sitting avatars would begin at link number 2 and up, until an object is encountered. At that point, the algorythims expect that the rest of the links are objects. This makes sense from a programming perspective, with things arranged this way, SL doesnt have to look at each and every link on an object and check if its an avatar to see if the object has any sitting avatars; SL can just figure "if there is no avatar at link number 2, then there are no avatars sitting on the object". This significantly speeds up processes that require the system to quickly unseat the avatars on the object, like when a vehicle is derezzed with several passengers on it.

Deleting child primitives wouldn't affect this process, but LL probably took the easy way out and just declared "NO LINK MODIFYING WHILE OBJECT HAS SITTERS ATTACHED" Heck, I would've done the same thing, this way it doesn't confuse users and cause bugs.

==Chris

Ahhh. Interesting, hadn't thought of that. Thanks!

(This would be yet another reason I want tree'd links. Avs would get thier own unique branch. )