Two problem with the current LL viewer

[Phil Deakins]

Sorry if either of these has been brought up before.

 

Problem 1

A few days ago, I started dropping out of SL quite frequently - sometimes after only a few minutes. Is this a common occurence?, or am I alone in experiencing it? It's so bad that I've had to go over to a 3rd party viewer (Singularity). I find that disappointing because I like using the LL viewer. - except for problem #2.

 

Problem 2

In recent times, I've been doing a lot of scripting - something I haven't done for quite a long time, so I don't know when this problem started. I find that the cursor moves across a line of text (script) at slightly longer distances than the text itself. It becomes very annoying when it's a fair way along a line, because it's actually indicating the wrong character, and I often have to count the cursor in from the end of a line to make sure I'm about to edit a particular character. Again, is this now common? or is it just my end? Since I've had to start using Singularity, it's very nice that the cursor actually indicates the correct characters - just like the LL viewer used to do.

[Buttacwup Float]

I don't script so nothing for you on #2, but I have not noticed any increase in drops on the latest LL release or the quick graphics rc viewer. I was on pretty much all day yesterday with the LL release without issue.

[Qie Niangao]

Regarding the script cursor, yeah, it's a real annoyance. Believe it or not, it used to be even worse for a while, and I think the viewer developers judge it "fixed enough" at this point, on the premise that serious scripters will all be piping scripts through their favourite IDE.

On the plus side, maybe, it's trained me to keep my script lines very short (except for string constants, which aren't that practical to festoon with "\"-protected linebreaks).

Back in the day, when I did enough SL scripting to care, I had emacs set as my external editor, and had it all rigged with eclipse and some pre-git revision contol system. Now, of course, those choices date me as a dinosaur. You can still choose your favourite text editor. (I see in the LSL forum that you already tried Rolig's favourite.)

[Phil Deakins]

Today it hasn't dropped me at all. The 2 previous days were impossible though. I'm hoping that it's over.

[Phil Deakins]

I don't know when the cursor thing started but it might show how long ago it is since I did any scripting - until recently - because it didn't used to happen, as you know.

I'm struggling with external editors though. I have LSL Editor, which uses LSL highlighting etc. by default, Notepad++ and Sublime Text, all set up for LSL highlighting. And all of them work fine except for one thing - those tabs. They can all cause the inworld script to display tabs as little boxes, and they can all replace tabs with spaces so that the layouts are ok. But I haven't found a way to make any of them cause the inworld script to display tabs in the same way they are displayed when you type the tab key.

It may be thought that converting them to spaces is ok, and it is as far as the layout is concerned, but it's not ok when you need to go down a bunch of lines, deleting a tab from the start of each of them. When that happens, you have to hit Delete 4 times for each line, and that's not nice.

I'm wondering if there's a debug setting in the viewer that displays tabs in the normal way, instead of those little tab-indicating boxes.

 

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

the cursor bug started in 2010, and persisted for UI scales other than 1.0

however, this is an interestng time to mention it: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/4.0.2.310545 has this:

• MAINT-5984 Incorrect cursor position with UI scale >1.0 still exists in Second Life 3.8.6 (305981)

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

I can't get to see MAINT-5984. Apparently, I do something that's not permitted. Dunno why though

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

I can't get to see MAINT-5984. Apparently, I do something that's not permitted. Dunno why though

---

oh yes, MAINT bugs are like that, they are not public. the public version is https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-10986 - that was a nudge to fnish work on the very old https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-21388

anyway, that viewer version has a patch for the issue, you might want to try it and see if the cursor behaves (provided you can stay logged in with it of course).

 

[Phil Deakins]

I read those pages - thank you. But I can't see a patch anywhere. What I did see is that people were talking about the UI setting. Mine was at 1.02 for some reason. I've now changed it to 1.0 to see if it makes a difference. ETA: it certainly seems to make a difference - so far.

Today has been much better - I've only dropped out once. But I haven't been doing as much with scripting as I've been doing lately, but I'm crossing my fingers.

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

the release notes from a few posts back, http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/4.0.2.310545  are where the bug is listed. download links are in those release notes at the top.

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

Ah. You meant to download the older viewer. I'll see how it goes with the UI set at 1.0 first. If it's no better, and if I can't get an external editor dealing with tabs satisfactorily, I'll download it and see if it makes a difference.

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

that viewer came out yesterday, it is brand new.

 

[Phil Deakins]

I must have read something wrong then. I thought it wa a little older than the one I'm using, but not by much.

I've downloaded it and I'll install it now.

[Nalates Urriah]

You have received a lot of good advice.

Losing connection is almost always a Internet issue. Having a good Internet connection does NOT mean you have a good connection to the SL servers. See: http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/

I think most scripters use an extrnal editor. If you want to use the viewer's editor and you can replicate the problem on demand, file a JIRA bug report. Reference the problem to the SL viewer. Otherwise try the LSLEditor. Its free and has a debugging environment. It is my preference. It is getting old and hasn't been updated since Oct 2013... so, it is now incomplete. But, if you test in SL and edit in LSLEditor its not bad.

If you moved over to Singularity from the Linden viewer you moved from a V3 interface to a V1 interface. I find that a tough adjustment. I suggests you try Firestorm, KanDo, Kokua, or the Linden RC HTTP viewer. They all have V3 user interfaces. 

Firestorm has additional support for scripters. Some others have similar support too. I just don't remember which ones do and don't.

[Phil Deakins]

I thank you for your post, Nalates, but it's a bit late as it was all sorted a while back.

I couldn't put the dropping down to Internet issues because I run 2 different viewers simultaneouly all the time - 2 avatars logged in all the time. One uses the LL viewer and the other uses Singularity. Singularity never dropped. Only the LL viewer did - all the time. It might have been that the LL is somehow more sensitive to little things than the Singularity one is. However, that problem only lasted less than 2 days. It simply went away.

I know that Singularity is a V1 viewer, and I know the differences. That's the very reaon why I use it. I know the other viewers and they don't interest me.

We went through the external editor thing earlier. I've used LSL Editor in the past and found it to be no good on account of it messing up tabbing, as mentioned earlier. I'm now using Sublime Text, which is much better. It was said earlier that it's free trial period is unlimited, and it is. It was also said that it doesn't keep reminding you to buy a license. That was no doubt true at one time, but not any more. It does keep reminding you.