On 18/06/10 23:47, Revlin John wrote:
This is related to a thread from the dec '09 archives, "Re: OAR File
Sharing Revisited", but I have some subject matter to add to the
previous discussion that I don't think was directly addressed.
The OAR & IAR file formats need a meta-data component, most likely
XML-based. This would facilitate many file sharing capabilities, allow
for some sort of version system AND, most importantly I think, allow for
tracking relationships between OAR's. The last capability seems to
relate back to "Re: OpenVCE OAR on Mega-Region?" thread from jan '10.
There actually is already a metadata file contained within OARs and IARs called archive.xml. It doesn't act as a
manifest but it does record version numbers for upward compatibility purposes.
Right now there's no mechanism for tracking relationships between
multiple OARs other than the archive's filename which tells almost
nothing about contents of the archive. Dido for IAR. A Meta-data system
of OAR/IAR archives should first and fore-most list the contents of the
archive as well as additional meta-data for each of individual component
of those contents. Version tracking is particularly useful in the case
where a second user wishes to edit and re-archive the contents of an
OAR, which would be a kind of sim re-mix. The would also allow for
saving/loading multi-region sims in ways that address some of the
short-falls of the current megaregion scheme (terrain load-tile still
isn't working on my server, but I digress...)
Not being able to save multi-regions is annoying and will ideally be fixed one day. Loading/saving regions is
unfortunately probably more complicated than simply load/saving the separate 256x256 spaces.
I also think that the issue of sharing content is seperate from the
issue of running the OpenSim server, meaning it should not be handled by
another os module. All that the OpenSim server requires for loading new
content from OARs and IARs is that the archive be placed in a folder
under the bin heiarchy (I download OARs to bin/import/oar) and then
loaded via the server command line. This is a pretty simple mechanism,
although some extra command line tools like the ability to list the
contents of an archive before loading it (via meta-data component) would
be extremely helpful.
Archives are actually just tar.gz files. You can untar them and inspect their
contents. See
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OpenSim_Archives
for more details.
However, the issue of retreiving OARs and IARS from a remote location is
another matter. What's needed is a separate application for tracking
and sharing OAR/IAR and it would naturally implement the above mentioned
meta-data component. Given these needs it seem like an appropriate
system might be something like a feed/subscription system, kind of like
a podcast/aggregator app. Feeds allow an app to track updates to content
without requiring the host system to actually download such content. The
retreival process can be managed, customized and automated, much like
the process of retrieving new and past episodes in a podcast feed.
Although the podcast system is limited by centralization, I think an
OAR/IAR feed system could implement some form of peer-to-peer
distribution capability, as well as allowing for multiple
creator/authors for a single feed (and multiple versions of a single
OAR/sim).
I'm not going to address this point directly, but I will note that it's possible to load iars/oars on the command line
from an URL as well as a file.
Any more complicated arrangement should almost certainly be left for tools outside OpenSim, imo. There are hooks by
which add-on region modules can call load/save oar/iar functionality.
This would be awesome. My lexicon of technical terms kind of fails me
when I think about the possibilities for OpenSim. If there's any
interest in these ideas I'd love to have an extensive group discussion
on the details of a potential implementation.
play and have fun,
Revlin
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Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
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