Opening notecards in external programs

[AyelaNewLife]

I'm fully aware that the following post is going to sound like peak technophobe-boomer vagueness. I'm just gonna own it, and say that I was distracted and a little bit tired and ordinarily would have been able to figure this out myself, but the below is going to sound like drivel. Soz.

I was viewing a full perm notecard last night, using the Firestorm viewer. It's full perm, thus I was editing the contents in the viewer as normal. I hit a button - my hazy memory tells me there's a huge "Edit" button on the notecard reader/editor screen, but I wouldn't want to put money on that - and this notecard opened in Notepad. The file name was an extensive string of characters, I believe broken up into chunks separated by hyphens? My assumption was that this file was buried in AppData somewhere, but I didn't look to check. I was able to edit the notecard in Notepad, and the saved changes were pushed to the viewer's notecard.

Is it a) possible, and b) plausible to edit a saved notecard outside the viewer, without logging in? And if so, how do I (intentionally) do this? Or am I just borderline-crazy (it's possible)?

I'd look myself, but this morning I checked my work inbox and immediately started comparing the width of my shoulders to how far the window opened, so...

[Maitimo]

When you edit and save your notecard in Notepad or other external program, you're just editing and saving a copy. Save in notepad will save it to your hard drive, it won't simultaneously change the notecard in-world.

So, while you can edit and save a copy of the notecard whilst logged out, you'll have to re-save it inworld next time you log back in. And since you can't upload a text file directly into the viewer, that means copy-paste the contents of your external notecard into the in-world one.

[AyelaNewLife]

So am I chalking this up to my version of Seicher's substance funtimes? Highly possible.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

4 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

I'm fully aware that the following post is going to sound like peak technophobe-boomer vagueness.

I didn't read the rest after I saw the "boomer" bit. I don't respect generational insults, for any generation.

[Lindal Kidd]

I think it's substance abuse, Ayela...or maybe you hit some key combination that's assigned to a copy/paste macro on your computer.  I took at look at the inworld Notecard controls and cannot find any way to cause what you saw with any of the "official" buttons.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I think it's substance abuse, Ayela...or maybe you hit some key combination that's assigned to a copy/paste macro on your computer.  I took at look at the inworld Notecard controls and cannot find any way to cause what you saw with any of the "official" buttons.

No, Ayela is right. I've done this by accident too. I'd have to log in to be sure this is how, but I've accidentally clicked an "edit" button and had it open the notecard in Notepad.

[AyelaNewLife]

I can confirm I am not crazy!

This button does indeed open up your default text editor. Making changes in said editor and then saving said notecard also does update the live notecard. Don't ask me how, but it does.

I don't think there's a way to intentionally do this while the viewer is closed. Or at least, 60 seconds of digging around didn't turn up an obvious solution. But that's okay.

[Janet Voxel]

12 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Highly possible.

Ha!

[MoiraKathleen]

I just tried this - opened an existing notecard and there was the edit button.  Very cool.  I had the edit button and was able to have it open in Notepad even for a non-modifiable notecard, and was able to make changes, BUT when I saved it in Notepad (for the non-modifiable NC) I got a viewer message that it was not able to upload it due to insufficient permissions to modify inventory item.  So this still preserves the permissions of the original NC in inventory.

For notecards where you want to be able to access the content later on your computer, without being able to log in,  once it's in Notepad you can do a "save as" and give it a meaningful name and change the folder to save it to.   Any edits done to the Notepad contents if renamed and saved elsewhere, I'm sure wouldn't upload back to the SL notecard, but it still could be handy for things you just want to reference later in an easier to read format.

[kiramanell]

20 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Is it a) possible, and b) plausible to edit a saved notecard outside the viewer, without logging in? And if so, how do I (intentionally) do this? Or am I just borderline-crazy (it's possible)?

 

I'll leave the state of your mental health to be guessed, 😁, but simply put: what you're saying is not possible. For starters, you absolutely need to be logged in to even get access to the notecard (either via your main inventory, or via a prim-inventory).

You can, however, try the opposite route: instead of trying to edit a notecard from the outside, which can't be done, let the script fetch data from an outside source; see http_request. Then you can just edit the text offline in the 'other' place, and the scipt will simply use that data.

[kiramanell]

7 hours ago, Moira Timmerman said:

I just tried this - opened an existing notecard and there was the edit button.  Very cool.  I had the edit button and was able to have it open in Notepad even for a non-modifiable notecard, and was able to make changes, BUT when I saved it in Notepad (for the non-modifiable NC) I got a viewer message that it was not able to upload it due to insufficient permissions to modify inventory item.  So this still preserves the permissions of the original NC in inventory.

 

Windows allows for the creation of DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) links, so that Notepad and the viewer editor can communicate with each other. Nifty setup. The permissions of the notecard simply never change: Notepad simply sends the updated data back to the editor (which then, for obvious reasons, informs the user it can't save the data).

[Nova Convair]

Firestorm opens the default editor for plain text files (which is Notepad for most of you).
It can do the same with scripts but you can customize the script editor of your choice here.

Of course it can only update the notecard/script in your inventory on save while you are logged in and have mod permissions.

[Anna Nova]

Just tried this with Visual Studio Code under Linux.  Works a treat.

Learn a nude thing every day....

[Lindal Kidd]

I'll update my original reply...

Yes!  I was wrong.  The reason I messed up is that I have never, apparently, in 13 years, clicked the "Edit" button.  I just click inside the note and start typing my changes, then hit Save.  This does NOT open the external text editor.

But clicking the Edit button DOES open an external window, and editing the text there DOES update the inworld notecard.

Son of a gun, who'd'a thunk it?

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I'll update my original reply...

Yes!  I was wrong.  The reason I messed up is that I have never, apparently, in 13 years, clicked the "Edit" button.  I just click inside the note and start typing my changes, then hit Save.  This does NOT open the external text editor.

But clicking the Edit button DOES open an external window, and editing the text there DOES update the inworld notecard.

Son of a gun, who'd'a thunk it?

It's a new-ish feature in Firestorm, part of the October 2019 update. So it's not like you were unaware of it for too very long.  

Edited May 21, 2020 by Sylvia Tamalyn

[MoiraKathleen]

It's available  in the Kokua viewer as well.