Get Rid of Default "Hello, Avatar!" Message?

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Am just starting with SL scripting and find it curious that everyone would seem to get the default "Hello, Avatar!" message every time they create a new script. If everybody else lives with this I suppose I can too, but I'm wondering whether it might somehow be possible to modify the default script to avoid this incessant repetition. I might also, for example, want a different default message rather than deleting it altogether. Can the default script be modified, I suppose that's the essential question. Another one would be whether such a default message is actually needed, and if so why. Thanks.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

I don't know if those messages can be changed (perhaps in the viewer code), but these messages should only be show for the very first time you create a prim, receive L$ and so on. After you did everything that triggers a message, you will never see them again.

On your current account, that is. If you want to spare future alt accounts from these messages too, you can turn them off altogether in the "Popup" tab of the preferences. The Emerald viewer has a nifty "Disable first time popups" button, whereas in the standard viewer, you will have to manually sort through them in order to keep the useful ones (region entry blocked, resident in busy mode and so on).

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

That's a perfectly adequate answer to the question of how to get rid of the the default message, thanks. A comment or comments regarding its possible utility would be welcome, but unless I see one I'll assume it's dispensable and will take advantage of the mentioned feature provided by the Emerald Viewer, which I'm using. Thanks again.

[Paladin Pinion]

What you're seeing is the default script as it executes on creation. It's a simple one that just says "Hello Avatar" on the public chat channel. We're all used to it and I don't know of any way to change it. As you noticed, you'll see it with each new script you create. It isn't one of the "messages" defined in the preferences, it's a result of the sample script running.

Like you, I got tired of it, so I created a blank script of my own that contains a few basic framework handlers. I store that at the top level of my inventory where it is easily accessible. Then when I want to make a new script, I just drag my template into the object contents instead of hitting the "new script" button. Blessed silence ensues.

[Franklin Serpente]

Never been an issue with me.   It's just convenient for me to create a new script from within the content button,  and then I immediately delete the sample and start with my own.  There is no earthly reason to leave it there unless of course you want to.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Unfortunately Ishtara completely missed what you were asking, although the posts just above this are good.  Two more things, if you don't want to find your own default in inventory each time: 1) you can create a new script in inventory instead of an object by right-clicking a folder and selecting 'new script',  That way you can edit it the way you want before it gets a chance to shout, 2) you can use an off-world scripting tool like, for instance, LSL Editor (just google it) which lets you write, compile and test offline and then just cut-paste into a new script in-world.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Oops, I think I maybe should have clicked Helpful on this, but thought I only saw two replies after the first one. Will consider all these possibilities when I'm creating scripts, thanks. Nobody has mentioned any actual utility of the "Hello, Avatar!" message, which confirms my impression of its being something of a nuisance. A harmless nuisance, perhaps tolerable, but annoying to me nonetheless.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

You say we're all used to it, but you yourself apparently take pains to avoid it. Considering that the ways of doing this don't seem to be that much less troublesome than the message itself, I can imagine that I'll wind up hitting the New Script button and grumbling. It just bothers me, that's all - that it doesn't seem to serve any important purpose, and that you can't change it or get rid of it. Thanks.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Like Paladin, you seem to contradict yourself a little too. You say the unwanted message has never been an issue with you, and yet that there's no earthly reason to leave it. That would at least be a contradiction for me. If I'm stuck with something I don't want, for me that's an issue. It's like the MobileMe panel in Mac OS System Preferences – I hated it when I found out they'd put that one in so it couldn't be deleted. Thanks.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I assume the 'hello avatar' script is there to give absolute beginners a template from which to start.  Since most of us script outside of SL and then just cut-paste the finished script in, overwriting whatever was there before, we never have (time for) an issue with the default :-)

You might like some of Emerald's client-side script-writing features though.  As they have a client-side precompiler I think they allow you to change the default initial script.  You also get compiler-directives and includes.  There's only one tiny drawback ... I haven't got a clue where I read theat now ^^ (and it's waaay past my bedtime so brain is falling out of gear).

Try Forums > Scripting, that's the place the scripters hang out, talk amongst ourselves and confuse newbies *grin*

 

[Paladin Pinion]

Sugarlips, what I meant by "used to it" is just that we all know it's there and we're...just used to it, is all. Like, I'm used to seeing advertising stuffed into the newspaper. It's just what's there. It doesn't hurt anything and some people do use it. Actually, I used the template script routinely as a starter for a while until I got tired of the talking and began creating scripts other ways instead. It's there as a simple launching point so you don't have to type a few common things.  You can either ignore it, delete it, or embellish it.

[Sharcel Bellic]

You can create a prim, make the script be what you want your default script to be, name the script and prim as you want,  then take the object back into your inventory, putting it a folder with a name like "Prims for scripting". Then when you want to create a prim with a script in it, drag the desired prim from your inventory onto the ground. You can do this for prims of each type, box, cylinder, torus, etc., as well as prims with any special shapes, textures, etc. you want to create easily.

[Alec Windlow]

Sugarlips.Shackleton wrote:

Oops, I think I maybe should have clicked Helpful on this, but thought I only saw two replies after the first one. Will consider all these possibilities when I'm creating scripts, thanks. Nobody has mentioned any actual utility of the "Hello, Avatar!" message, which confirms my impression of its being something of a nuisance. A harmless nuisance, perhaps tolerable, but annoying to me nonetheless.

 

The phrase 'Hello World' has been a sort of default entry point task in the learning of many, if not most, programming languages for decades, since echoing text to the screen is about as simple as it gets. Safe to say the SL default is a pun based on that, though I never considered that it had the potential to be so offensive.

Personally, I just delete it and get on with life.

[Marcush Nemeth]

It's a sort of easter egg. Well actually it isn't an easter egg at all, it's a reference. Back in the 80's, about every single book on how to learn programming started with a sample code to print "Hello World" on screen. The "Hello Avatar" code is just like that: first steps into programming, while also including the most basic parts of an LSL script, to alter as you see fit: a state_default state, and two events: state_entry and on_touch.

 

I think this default script is generated server-side, so I don't think itcan be altered in the standard SL viewer. A third party viewer however could probably be coded to immediately replace that code. I'm not sure whether it'd be allowed to do so according to the license agreement though, but I bet it is possible.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

P.S. Trying to take advantage of the suggestion of using the Emerald Viewer "Disable first time popups" button to suppress the unwanted message, I found however that I didn't understand the button and don't see how it works.  When I click on it it highlights, but the highlighting disappears when I click elsewhere and I'm not sure that it's even applied, in addition to not understand its general function very well anyway. I'm afraid to mess around with the buttons in the particular preference pane concerned, as the on-and-off defaults at first glance seem pretty appropriate and I don't feel like wiping them out. Thanks.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

It's there as a simple launching point so you don't have to type a few common things.

That's good, thanks. But I still continue to get the impression that nearly all of you, the same as me, want to modify it in one way or another. Imagine if every time you launched Word, for example, you were faced with a default doc you didn't want and couldn't modify, and had to launch your own template.

Okay, so a lot of people have gotten used to Word too. I never have, but that's another topic and not one for this forum.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

The phrase 'Hello World' has been a sort of default entry point task in the learning of many, if not most, programming languages for decades,

Precisely. So why should I have to be incessantly reminded of that?

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Thanks for the info, Peter. If you're ever well-rested and remember where you saw about the Emerald client-side precompiler that allows changing the default initial script (which is exactly what I want to do), I hope you'll let me know.

Try Forums > Scripting, that's the place the scripters hang out, talk amongst ourselves and confuse newbies *grin*

Will have to find that... Ah yes, under the Community tab. Bookmarked and will be there, thanks again.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Thanks. This sounds like an approach I might want to follow if and when I indeed have a need for different templates. It re-raises a question regarding inventory lists, however. One or two people have said something about putting frequently used things at the top of the list, but I'm not sure how to do that. My impression is that there's a fairly long column of default folders that can't be deleted or renamed, and that any other custom folders fall in below these. So I don't know how to get things really up at the top.

I'm actually trying very hard to keep everything in the the basic default folders, this to avoid two separate alphabetic orderings, which I find disagreeably messy. This seems actually fairly easy to do, given for example that just about anything can be an "Object".

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

First steps into programming, okay – but it's like a shackle when you move beyond that (not that I have yet). Imagine if every time you went to ride your bicycle, you had to take the training wheels off first.

[Thibaud Merlin]

Sugarlips, imho you spent more time posting on this topics than you will probably ever do deleting the few default lines of script which bother you.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

That's probably true. I know I often spend more time – sometimes much more time – scripting things on my Mac than it would take me to just do them manually. But as Adobe scripting maven Olav Kvern once said, "When desperation finally drove me to scripting, what surprised me the most was that the process of working on developing a program, or a script, is a lot like the process of drawing or writing or doing something creative. It's something I ended up, quite against my will, enjoying."

[Alec Windlow]

Sugarlips.Shackleton wrote:

Precisely. So why should I have to be incessantly reminded of that?

Incessantly? How many times could you possibly be clicking the 'New Script' button? At this point, your question is probably best directed to LL via the ticket or Jira mechanisms.

It's two harmless words which appear in your local chat (if you even happen to be looking) upon creation on a new script, demonstrating common state entry and message echo functions, and is just as quickly gone forever with the 'Ctrl-A' and 'Del' keypresses. I can't picture a scenario where this could possibly bother anybody, and with the practice presumably having been around since the early days of LSL, I've never so much as heard a whisper from the most critical person that it could be perceived as a source of bother.

Here's a suggestion. Create your scripts from an empty template you keep in your inventory, dragging into whatever prim needs them. No more incessant 'Hello Avatar' messages causing untold annoyance.

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess, and maybe I am extreme on this. I'm just used to being able to modify my defaults and have thus acquired the notion that I should be able to do so if I want, that's all. By "incessant" I meant unceasing, not frequent. It wasn't a very opportune term, but "ceaseless" or "unending" or "relentless" wouldn't have been either.

[DR Dahlgren]

The answer is simple. There is no way at present to remove the "Hello Avatar!" message from the default script. It is created from a database entry when you create a new script in an object. Tired of the message? Then don't hit the New Script button. Simply create a script in your invnetory to use as your own starting point. Maybe include a set of comment lines that show you created it, etc., then drag that into the prims contents and edit away.

Other that than, just ignore it.

__________________________

[Sugarlips Shackleton]

Okay, thanks, let's move on.