Change in notecard behaviour?

I'm willing to admit up front that the following might just be a case of my finally noticing how it's always been....

That being said, you know how in your inventory you can have a notecard open, and be writing something and save as you go, and everything's fine? (Cause if there's any computer application that you would want to save frequently in, it's in SL!)

Well it *seems* to me -- though I'm not sure.. that if you were editing a config card or a menuitems card or whatever that were inside a prim.... that you used to be able to do the same, save as you go.

BUT you know how each time a notecard is saved, it reputedly gets a different UUID (so I'm told.) So what seems to be happening now is....you type a few words and hit save, and the one in the prim gets a UUID different from the version you have open on the screen. You push on with your notecard editing, getting lots of stuff in there, saving as you go.... then close it. And if you re-open it from the prim, you'll find that only the first few words that you typed before your first save got in there.

Maybe it's always been this way with editing notecards inside prims? I mean, in theory it should have always been this way I guess owing to the "different UUID with each save" thing, but if it has been this way always, it's like it's a lot more unforgiving now.

(I know this is not directly scripting related, but I couldn't find the specific forum dedicated to just notecards :} and this is ocuring with customers who are filling out config cards in my scripted products. I'm able to confirm that it will happen to me, too.)

This must be new, because I do that all the time: work on scripts or config cards or .readme files and save frequently. Real frequently -- every time I've made any progress, because my computer can lock up in an instant. (Plus I've been using computers longer than most folks here have been alive, and it's a habit I learned early on!)

Might be related to the sim update. Does anyone know how to see the sim version when ingame? I see notices telling me it's changed, but I can't tell from what to what.

I found recently that if I left Build mode while still having the notecard window open, changes would not reliably get saved back to the card inside the prim. I don't recall offhand if that's "new behaviour", or how it's always been.

(I believe that "hit save = get a new UUID" has always been the case, though)

Ack! That's new then, and a real damn nuisance. I definitely do this all the time: close the contents or edit window and continue to work on scripts or notecards.

No, the problem is that prim inventory content updates lag for a few to many seconds, depending on a number of factors.

Probably, what is being seen is this:

1) Open prim in build menu. Contents take a second or two to load.
2) Open notecard from contents.
3) Edit and save notecard.
4) Immediately re-open notecard, note that it is the old/previous version.
5) Prim inventory update comes through after a short delay, probably unnoticed by the user.
6) Close notecard, double-click to reopen again, note that it is the updated version.

Always been that way. Unlike your avatar inventory, which updates instantaneously, prim inventory takes longer to load/update after a change, so can lead to inconsistent data.

Note that this is only a problem with the viewer in how the sim sends prim inventory updates to it. When you save the notecard, causing a CHANGED_INVENTORY changed() event to occur, the inventory has already been updated as far as the script is concerned, so there is no need to delay processing the updated notecard for scripts.

I wish indeed that were the case, but sadly it has not been what I have experienced in the past week or so. The work saved has never returned, ever, for me, or for the few people who said to me "yeah, same thing happening to me."

Granted this is not a scientific sampling, just experiential.

There have been times, and maybe it is tied to certain sim versions, where you have to unselect / reselect the object to get it to refresh the prim inventory.

However, outside of that circumstance, I have never experienced what you describe, which is why it came to mind, since that is the only avenue I have seen it occur in.

I'm chatting right now with several competent, careful people in an inworld-group chat session who are tearing their hair out over the issue.

I have also been experiencing this over the past few days. I'm finding that it is also happening when I close the notecard immediately after saving it...not just when I leave it open after save.

When you save a notecard you will have to leave it open until the save process has finished. Then, and only then can you safely close the window.

Close it too soon and you will either have the old text or an empty notecard when you open it again.

This is also one of the reasons why sometimes a scripts source code gets "lost". People save, but don't wait for the compile & save to finish. And then wonder why the source is either the old version or lost.

Editing on in-world object contents has definitely always been wonky, especially so for attachments, it seems. You can pretty consistently edit a script in an attachment, detach, reattach, and watch it revert back.

Well what is odd to me is that I've never experienced this before and I have been editing MLP notecards for over a year now. It's puzzling to me as to why I'm now having this challenge with notecards in the latest MLPv2. Is it an SL glitch that's happening right now or a script bug? Lear knows about it as mentioned above and I know he and Chaz have been looking at it. And...just for the record...I loooove MLPv2. : )

Desi

i have bald patches from waiting for contents to refresh after changing notecards, and then finding the save never happened, or it missed bits. and im not techie to know the whys of these things. so now i create new positions notecards in inventory and do the memdump to those, and i repeat and overwrite for each button, saving as i go along. whether its menuitems or positions, refresh is almost instant, and the only wait i now have is deleting the old cards from the unit, waiting to see they have indeed gone, and then dropping the new ones in, waiting to see they are indeed present, and resetting. i havent had any problem since.

Yes, seems to be the way to go these days.

I suppose all this is a symptom of notecards getting a new UUID everytime they are saved, which is a barrier btw it seems to many other things. Just doesn't seem like a sustainable model in the years ahead. Bit absurd that correcting in a notecard the spelling of your favourite typo -- say "teh" to "the" triggers a whole inventory change event and a 3 minute wait. Punishes you for wanting to get things as good as you can make them, in a way, don't it?

I've edited scripts in attachments thousands of times and never seen this.

BTW, I haven't yet seen the problem Chaz mentions at the top (but I've been away for a week or so).

In my experience, editing notecards and scripts in inworld objects or attachments has never been wonky, except for the times when there were serious server problems and *everything* is wonky.

While this may be related to changing UUID, I think it must be a new problem, not an old one. BTW, I'm still running the old client -- haven't yet updated to the new ugly one. When I do update, I'll see if I get the new behavior. Perhaps this is a new client bug.

i noted that one has to wait following a save [leaving the card open even after it reverts to white] until that card can once again be opened in prim contents. repeated deselecting the prim and allowing it to reload seems to speed up the process but 99% of the time data is lost anyway. but u only find that out when u have finished all your work and charge the bugger up to find x is missing from .menu or .positions because the line u deleted/added never 'registered' or it doesnt recognise the anims u dropped in. it is an arduous process to be sure.

Seriously, edit those things in your (resident) inventory, then drop them in. Write your scripts to be able to deal with the removal and re-adding of a notecard they depend on. I'd suggest the same thing for non-trivial scripts. It's a LOT safer!