Reading gestures from script for a gestures vendor?

Hello,

I am scripting a vendor for someone who creates gestures. Now she told me she has seen a vendor for gestures that shows the gestures as you cycle through them.

I am guessing it is just being done with hover text, or is there another way? And is there a way to get the data from the gestures (in the veondors inventory), or is it inevitable to include an alternative description for the gestures that can be interepreted from the script?

Thanks!

Fractality

I have seen pose stands that allow you to cycle through animations... no idea how to make them, but basically it's like a normal pose stand used for avatar editing, with cycle-buttons that change the animation.

Thanks, that is an interesting idea, to show the gesture directly on the avatar.

I just created a little test with hover text, but the gestures don't show up properly. That is because the hover text doesn't use a fixed width font, so the ASCII art gets distorted. It seems a normal gestures is shown with a fixed width font?

Any ideas?

Just to clarify things....

Gestures (as in SL) are not an item that can be "previewed". They are basically a list of actions that are to be performed in a given order. Like, play a sound, play an animation, wait x seconds, ...

Animations and Sounds however, can be previewed.

So I assume we're talking about animations here.

Well, at least for my particular client, I think the main feature of the Gesture is the ASCII art she created. True, the gesture is just a sequence of actions, and it would seem easy to write an interpreter for them in LSL. Except that it seems to be impossible to access the resources within the gesture. And the second problem is the output of ASCII art. I think it only works in a fixed width font, and if I chat from a script or set a hover text, it won't have a fixed width font. So there is apparently no way to emulate that feature of a gesture?

I kinda thought the hovertext font was fixed width, but actually, don't avatar utterances use the same fonts as scripted chat? (Maybe it's just my preference settings, but every "ASCII art" gesture I see looks dopey in just that same way.)

I snooped around some gesture vendors in-world... unless there's magic I'm missing, they must be doing something like interpretation of gesture action lists from a notecard.

I created a gesture vendor on my own. It seemed to be the easiest way to rebuild the gesture on an notecard. More work for the gesture builder, better preview for the customer.

Alternatively, if the gesture is animated, put it on a texture and use texture animation.

The only way i've seen this work in a vender is to load separately the animation,sound and (text on a notecard) into the vender prims inventory. When the customer tries the gesture from the vender, they activate in sequence with the "attach permission request" (as a trigger) asks permission from the customer to wear the animation, the vender plays the sound and says the text. The full gesture is added to the vender inventory for purchase.