-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [email protected] wrote: > On 29 Apr 2009, at 20:45, JB Kraft wrote: > >> Perhaps a more modular approach, plugin style, might be considered. >> From my own usage and perspective, voice and windlight would be the >> first two .so's to go. > > A plugin architecture for the client would be incredibly useful, and > I've promoted the idea in my own small way (rather than "hey, you want > something different? Build and release your own client!") for a couple > of years now.
Um, folks - and how exactly do you want the renderer (Windlight) to be a removable plugin? Windlight (as technology) are basically just programmable shaders. If you remove that (turning off shaders in preferences does the same), you have more or less the old style 1.18 viewer, graphics-wise. What exactly would this as a plugin achieve? The shaders are not in the main memory - they run on the GPU, so you do not even save that by not loading them. Voice mentioned by JB Kraft is not even integrated in the viewer itself, it is an external application that you do not need to run if you do not want it and the viewer will work even if it is not present. So what plugin are we talking about? The few floaters for controlling it? Plugins make things needlessly complex and are not useful as a general design approach for core functionality. Furthermore, the viewer doesn't even use shared libraries yet (everything statically linked, with the exception of few a things loaded dynamically - FMOD, gstreamer, etc). *THAT* is what needs to be fixed, not jumping up and down about plugins as a panacea. I am trying to build a headless client based on the C++ sources for research right now, and thanks to rather poor modularization it is pretty difficult to do. I need to duplicate an re-implement quite a bit of functionality that is in the viewer already (e.g. LLAgent, LLWearable classes), because unless I want to pull in dependencies on XUL, the viewer UI and what not even for basic things like setting agent's appearance inworld I cannot use them. That is what needs to be fixed - once it is done, you can pretty much build whatever client you want and you do not need any "plugins". Regards, Jan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mandriva - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJ+jmPn11XseNj94gRAixIAJ42uqqUpOrC0iVotd65dSFMuy3/YwCgiiN9 RvgI55LUd/uRQBY6hF7JX8c= =hlIx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
