Text on a prim

[Eloise Baily]

Hi all,

I want to make a sign for a friend, where she can change the text herself, with either a notecard or a chat command.

Is there a script out there where I can do that, preferably in a nice font?

Thanks

El x

[Void Singer]

you have three main options.

hovertext:
turn the prim sideways and reduce size of z axis. simple, color choices, no font choices. there's a million scripts every for this. search for titler on the wiki or elsewhere for basic examples.

Parcel media + server (could be and LSL server):
any options you care to add (via html/css), complex to set up, but everyone can see it. no known examples

Shared Media (MOAP) + server (could be an LSL server):
any options you care to add (via html/css), complex to set up, not everyone can see it and most will be required to click on it first. Complete solution available here

[Helium Loon]

There is a fourth option, used heavily already in SL, which is the multi-prim single-letter on a face, mapped font image way.  It uses a font image (a texture with every letter in the font on it, regularly spaced) and then the sign has lots of rectangular thin blocks across it (which all use the previous texture on their facing face.)  The texture repeats and offsets are adjusted so each 'block' shows only the letter on the image it needs to.

 

These are used heavily for scoreboards and such already.  And a script could easily convert what was found in a notecard into offsets for each block prim on the object.

 

Prim-heavy, yes.  But allows lots of color, font, and size options.  Complicated scripting too.

 

But it IS an option.....

 

[Eloise Baily]

Thanks guys. I've been asked to keep the prim count down so looks like I'll have to think of another way.

Your help is much appreciated

[Innula Zenovka]

Can you give some more details of the spec?  One option, for example,  which might be attractive in some circumstances, is to prepare textures for the sign,  and change those by chat command or whatever.   This can be combined, sometimes, quite effectively with the " multi-prim single-letter on a face" method Void mentions.   So much depends on what the sign's going to be like and what sort of (and how much) text it needs.

[Rufus Darkfold]

It's not all that prim-heavy,  xyzzytext gets either 5 or 10 characters per prim (depending on how many textures you want to use).

If that is too much, then consider MOAP.  You can use data: urls to avoid the need for any server.   MOAP requires at least a v2 viewer though.

Parcel media may be another option,  and it works with all viewers.   Only one settiing per parcel though.

Other than that,  make textures for all the possible signs (maybe several on one texture and use offsets to select).   This would be by far the easiest way if there are a relatively small number of possibilities for what the sign will display.

[Void Singer]

doh you're right XYText and it's variants.... currently 1prim/5letters(10 with some texture magic). (altough that may change with mesh)

and of course the really hacky digital display or sculpted letters... suppose I didn't think that all the way through.

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, Mesh supports 8 sides, and they can all face the same way, so one could get up to 16 chars/prim (using the 2-char textures).  Unfortunately, however, there's that nasty prim-equivalence overhead in Mesh: because the thing must contain a script, it starts at a PE of 2, which is a worse letter-per-prim-equivalent than the standard carved-up prism.  That overhead is a constant, so for longer texts it would be a win.

[Rufus Darkfold]

Yes, and if you're using mesh, then you need a v3 viewer anyway, so you could still use MOAP which would be far more prim-efficient.

Note that there is a configurable limit in the viewer (defaults to 8) for the number of MOAP prims that can display at the same time, but you would only need one per sign.

Could be an issue if there are a large number of signs that are visible at the same time though.

[Eloise Baily]

Thanks again folks.

I like the idea of XYtext so all I have to do now its find the damn stuff to make it with

[PeterCanessa Oh]

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:LSL_Library

Links to various versions (and all sorts of other stuff, of course)

[Eloise Baily]

Thanks Peter.

I'll have a play next time I'm inworld. (scripts scare me!)

[Void Singer]

---

Rufus Darkfold wrote:

Yes, and if you're using mesh, then you need a v3 viewer anyway,[...]

---

actually there are currently 2, soon to be 3 viewers that support Mesh but not MOAP (Cool, Astra, Singularity), and only 2 that support both (vaniLLa V3, and Firestorm).

only vaniLLa V3 currently supports uploads for mesh (now that Kirstens has been pulled from market), but that should change quickly.

[Nexii Malthus]

That reminds me.

 

Forgot to put a script on the wiki.