There’s a bit of a hoo ha about Qarl’s alignment tool being rejected by Linden Lab for implementation in the official viewer, this discussion takes place in Jira Storm 468. I’ve never used this tool, so I can’t comment on how awesome or not it is, I did try to install Firestorm last weekend but Norton 360 threw a wobbly about slplugin.exe, this is a known issue. I’m not a big fan of third party viewers (TPV’s), however this issue highlights why TPV’s are a useful community addition.
Let’s just rewind slightly to try to demonstrate why Charlar Linden isn’t acting like Darth Charlar over this issue. I recently blogged on how Blender may drop COLLADA import/export from the official release. Collada is the export tool to make Mesh items in Blender compatible with Second Life but it creates support issues for Blender as a whole. Blender have as an option thrown this over to the Blender community to fix COLLADA issues, as Sergey Sharibin explained:
“More optimistic targets would be find volunteer to pick up this stuff who will make it usable (maybe rewritting this stuff from scratch..) ”
Linden Lab’s approach to the prim alignment tool is very similar, only of course, it’s not already in the official release viewer.
Charlar’s reasons for rejecting the tool have been widely reported, Tateru Nino covers it here and Inara Pey here. In the Jira Charlar states:
“Thanks for making this effort. Alignment and snapping are an area where there are useful enhancements to be made. However, we are not able to accept this contribution as it is.
These are the primary issues we found which resulted in that decision:
- The feature should support the same modes as the other manipulation modes.
- It does not work for non-mod permission objects. This functionality should work for all objects that the user can manipulate in-world.
- It only supports World snap mode, not Reference and Local modes, unlike all our other manipulation modes.
- It packs and aligns to the face of the object bounding box. If objects are not cubes and do not share the same alignment, or aren’t aligned with the world coordinates (see above), the result of the operation is unexpected. Ideally the operations would use the actual shape of the object for aligning and packing.
- There are also some coding implementation style issues that would need to be addressed. These can be covered in more depth after the functionality is dealt with.
In it’s current form, this is usable for purely prim-based builders under specific circumstances. It’s less useful for building with non-cube prims, mesh, sculpties. It’s minimally useful for building when the structure is not facing a global direction (ex: North, South, East, West). It’s not usable by non-building residents who need to place and organize purchased items.”
Some seem to think this rejection is due to it being a solution created by Qarl, I don’t see things this way, although I do think Qarl’s contributions to Second Life should be positively encouraged and really, he should still be working for Linden Lab, but I’m in danger of going off on a big tangent if I go down that route.
Further in the JIRA Charlar also comments:
“To be clear, we’re hoping that the submitters will make the needed improvements and resubmit.”
This is similar to one of the proposals made by Blender for keeping COLLADA import/export support going, it’s not ideal, some will feel the alignment tool is something that should be in the official release viewer anyway and the work should be being carried out by Linden Lab, but we are where we are, TPV’s can carry on implementing this code, giving users real usability options. TPV’s can carry on attracting a large number of users away from the official release viewer and into their hands. This is why, despite my reservations about TPV’s, they are very much a positive on the whole for the Second Life community.
As it stands, Jira’s would be created and support issues would be created if this tool was implemented into the official release viewer. The solution Linden Lab are seeking here is not unusual, they are not the evil empire, these are not the droids you’re looking for. Arguments can rage on about whose responsibility it should be to fix the issues, but I do get the impression that when Charlar enters the room too many people see and hear this:
I think that at least in part the problem was the way it was handled. See, there was this JIRA “A” in which Chanrlar announced that LL decided to reject the code as it is now and also decided not work on it, and then JIRA “A” was closed… but there was this JIRA “B” which duplicated JIRA “A”, and JIRA “B” remained open – but the decision wasn’t announced there, it was announced as a comment to JIRA “A”… Eventually, JIRA “A” was reopened and JIRA “B” was closed… It is a bit confusing, isn’t it?
Yes that is confusing, so the conversation took off in the wrong Jira really, I’ve seen Oz’s comments and noticed it now has a status of Open development Candidates with Oz asking for people to contact him if they want to help with this.
Charlar is obviously constrained by what he can / cannot say – and it’s ironic that when many of us are complaining about a lack of communication, he’s making the effort and seemingly getting bashed for it. Sadly, however, there were/are seemingly valid issues around some of the reasons given for rejection – which is not to say other reasons don’t have validity.
Where I do draw the line, and agree with you wholeheartedly, is in the way some commentators responding to various blog posts have cast Charlar. Many of these comments are both personal and uncalled-for.
My personal feeling is, limitations (and later JIRA comment) notwithstanding, the tool has the potential to be enhanced – which is something LL have ably carried out in the past with great effect – and if not suitable for inclusion in the Viewer right now, offers the potential for further collaborative work. However and allowing for the fact we’re *not* privy to what may (or may not) have passed between LL & Karl on the matter of the rejection, the wording of the reasons for it being rejected does tend to slant things towards the entire matter being left dead in the water.
Tateru made the point in her blog comments that Linden Lab have previously taken incomplete solutions and worked on them themselves, so that was questionable.
Oz has now changed the status to Open Development Candidates, with the Jira re-opened, so it does seem LL aren’t quite shutting the door.
I didn’t even realise there was an Open Development Candidates status.