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1 | WoMan is a virtual world account and viewer manager, mostly of the SL | ||
2 | (Second Life) variety since that's my focus. Most SL style virtual | ||
3 | world viewers can be invoked with options to start them logging on, and | ||
4 | skipping the login screen. So this project aims to be that login | ||
5 | screen, doing all the things that can be done from the meta-impy login | ||
6 | screen, plus more. Once the user hits the login button, woMan figures | ||
7 | out what parameters to pass to what viewer, then starts it up and gets | ||
8 | out of the way. Following the ClientHamr philosophy of breaking the | ||
9 | viewer up into modules that do simpler tasks, and do them well. So that | ||
10 | means that meta-impy will eventually loose it's login screen, to be | ||
11 | replaced by woMan. | ||
12 | |||
13 | WoMan starts off looking like any other viewers login screen, showing | ||
14 | the login page of the default, or last visited grid, a small menu at the | ||
15 | top with the usual functions, and the usual login buttons at the bottom. | ||
16 | Added to that will be a better grid manager, with proper user | ||
17 | management, suitable for people with more than one account per grid. | ||
18 | The user will have the ability to choose a virtual world viewer to be | ||
19 | the default, and even to associate a particular viewer with a particular | ||
20 | grid. This is useful, for instance, for grids that have their own | ||
21 | custom viewers, but the user wants to use a more generic viewer for all | ||
22 | the other grids. Or if the user wants to use one viewer for OpenSim | ||
23 | grids, but another for LL (Linden Labs) grids. Coz perhaps their chosen | ||
24 | viewer is not TPVP (Third Party Viewer Policy, an LL thing) compliant, | ||
25 | and LL are just more anal than the rest of the universe. | ||
26 | |||
27 | NOTE: since I started this, LL in their *cough* infinite wisdom *cough*, | ||
28 | decided that support of OpenSIm was a Really Bad Thing, so their viewers | ||
29 | are no longer capable of dealing with other grids. LL have even gone as | ||
30 | far as try to get other viewers to not support other grids. As far as | ||
31 | woMan is concerned, this just means that LL viewers, and viewers that | ||
32 | drank the LL koolaid, are less functional. shrugs | ||
33 | |||
34 | The grid manager will also include some sort of search capability, as is | ||
35 | currently being discussed by various people in the OpenSim universe. | ||
36 | There might even be several search systems in place, so supporting | ||
37 | existing ones, and the ability to add more might be useful. WoMan | ||
38 | should be the only thing registered to handle hop:// and other such URLs | ||
39 | in whatever web browsers you are using. Though most viewers want to | ||
40 | register themselves, so tends to be that which ever one you started up | ||
41 | last, or first, gets that privilege. That's a whole can of worms, sane | ||
42 | policy and code should help. | ||
43 | |||
44 | It might be useful to have woMan be able to download viewers, | ||
45 | including checking for updates and offering to download them. As well | ||
46 | as updates to common things like viewer tag definition files. | ||
47 | |||
48 | WoMan, unlike the LL viewer code base, will be designed for relogging. | ||
49 | Once the viewer it starts quits (or crashes), WoMan, which was still | ||
50 | running, can pop again and let the user relog, or log to some other | ||
51 | grid, or same grid as different a user, or even same grid as same user | ||
52 | with a different viewer. | ||
53 | |||
54 | Viewers can be made woMan aware, like meta-impy will be (since it's | ||
55 | handing it's login screen functionality to woMan). A few more things | ||
56 | make sense to be added in this case. For instance, you might want to | ||
57 | have some or all of your LMs (LandMarks) be usable at the log in | ||
58 | screen, so you can log directly to them. The user might want the choice | ||
59 | when they HG (HyperGrid teleport) to actually start up a new viewer and | ||
60 | just login to the other grid instead (if they already have an account | ||
61 | there). While HGed to some new grid, the user might want to add that | ||
62 | grid to the woMan grid manager at a simple click of a button, perhaps | ||
63 | complete with an LM for their current position. The grid searching | ||
64 | capabilities mentioned earlier might be needed while in world. | ||
65 | Certainly the grid manager functions in meta-impy will be handled by | ||
66 | woMan, even if in world. | ||
67 | |||
68 | In order to display the login page of a grid, which is a web page, a web | ||
69 | browser will be built into woMan. It could be used to display web | ||
70 | pages within an woMan aware viewer. Though perhaps not for MOAP | ||
71 | (Media On A Prim), unless woMan grows the ability to incorporate | ||
72 | itself into the viewers 3D landscape as part of a prim. Which is a good | ||
73 | idea, then meta-impy no longer needs a web browser. Though other things | ||
74 | in the viewer are implemented as web pages, and LL are moving more stuff | ||
75 | to the web. | ||
76 | |||
77 | One of the things on the login screen is the menu option to start up the | ||
78 | preferences window and change the viewers preferences. Viewers use XML | ||
79 | files that not only store the preferences, but also a description of | ||
80 | them. The preferences window and it's various parts are also stored as | ||
81 | XML files. There is a bit missing that is in the viewer source code | ||
82 | that ties all of this together. So it might not be possible to do this | ||
83 | for all viewers. WoMan aware viewers can naturally provide the | ||
84 | missing bits to woMan, even if not running, or even pass that entire | ||
85 | functionality to woMan, just like meta-impy will do. | ||
86 | |||
87 | For the purposes of keeping resource usage low, it should be possible | ||
88 | for the user to configure woMan to go away when it starts a viewer. | ||
89 | Might be a good idea even for woMan aware viewers, that can start it | ||
90 | up again if it's functionality is needed while in world. Note this "go | ||
91 | away" means to stop running and free up any resources it was using; | ||
92 | which is different from the "gets out of the way" it usually does, still | ||
93 | running, just not on screen. | ||
94 | |||
95 | |||
96 | The problem with the web. | ||
97 | ------------------------- | ||
98 | |||
99 | At least that's the theory. In practice, a web browser takes up almost | ||
100 | one third of the viewer, and is only used for three things. Login | ||
101 | pages, simple built in browser window, and MOAP (Media On A Prim). For | ||
102 | the first two full blown web browsers are massive overkill. MOAP is not | ||
103 | supported by meta-impy yet anyway. | ||
104 | |||
105 | WebKit is a pain to compile at the moment, for reasons I wont go into | ||
106 | right now. At the opposite of the spectrum is dillo, which is not quite | ||
107 | up to spec enough for login pages that have fancy stuff. There does not | ||
108 | appear to be any middle ground. So right now, I'll work on using random | ||
109 | web browsers as external windows. That will suffice for everything but | ||
110 | MOAP, which I can leave until later. Just discovered netsurf, a little | ||
111 | smaller than dillo, but perhaps better featured? Might be useful. | ||
112 | |||
113 | The web is a bloated mess, so it's not surprising that a fully featured | ||
114 | web browser component like WebKit is also a bloated mess. | ||
115 | |||
116 | |||
117 | Design. | ||
118 | ------- | ||
119 | |||
120 | A thin window on the left. | ||
121 | |||
122 | Menus across the top. | ||
123 | View tabs. | ||
124 | Grids Accounts Viewers Landmarks | ||
125 | |||
126 | Grids tab is the grid manager, though you can also drill down / tree out | ||
127 | the accounts list per grid. | ||
128 | |||
129 | Accounts shows accounts, though can drill down to grid list per account. | ||
130 | Also consider launching thin viewers, text only ones and such. The | ||
131 | account view is almost a natural for extending into a IM style thingy. | ||
132 | |||
133 | Viewers lists the installed viewers, can install more, and allows | ||
134 | preferences editing. It can handle viewer installs, upgrades, even | ||
135 | compiling them from source. | ||
136 | |||
137 | Landmarks manages LMs from viewers, or log in spots, or SLURLs etc. | ||
138 | |||
139 | A user configurable web browser can open up to fill the right of the | ||
140 | screen. | ||
141 | |||
142 | Log file management features, including viewer stdout, check if only | ||
143 | Linux viewers do that. Including chat logs. | ||
144 | |||
145 | Dillo and uzbl can insert themselves into the windows of others. Should | ||
146 | check that out. Netsurf is allegedly easy to port to things, might be | ||
147 | able to port it to EFL. | ||
148 | |||