Lists, dialog menus and efficiency

[Ciaran Laval]

I'm writing a script, which may well never get completed but that's a different story. Anyway, this script will have dynamic dialog menus after scanning.

The dialog menu may well need more than twelve buttons, which means it will need a next page, previous page in certain circumstances, so it's twelve buttons per page.

1. Is it better to have one list that gets updated when I change page, so for example page one's twelve buttons would, when next is selected, empty the contents of the list and then add contents from a different point in the main list for the buttons on page two, or is it better to have one list for each page? The latter would mean more emptying and I'm wondering if those empty lists then take up much memory space. However the former would mean emptying and adding when someone went back and forth.

2. Is it better to compile the script in mono? Mono looks like it has more potential for handling larger lists.

[Void Singer]

one list that you pull a sub-list from... you can see an example of this in the multipage dialog code I posted on the LSL Library Forum... in essence it takes a single master list and pulls elements from it as needed to make a full page and inserts fwd/rev buttons as needed (it auto wraps the list too)

the idea I built from was to keep your main list as static as possible (while still allowing it to be modified) and providing enough flexibility to serve multiple individual avatars on the same channel without needing extra tracking, for features like re-menu (allowing you to pop back to the correct page after a choice is made if desired)

 

as for lso/mono... unless the list is in the hundreds, or your code takes up equivalent space, it probably won't matter for a dialog list, and the consideration should be on other factors such as if it'll travel between regions or (de)rez frequently.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

Cheers Void.