Archive for the 'Status Updates' Category
August 28th, 2010 by McCabe Maxsted
Hey there, McCabe here 
You may have seen me teleporting around the metaverse (check out the grid list in our Grid Manager!) or answering questions on the forums and in group chat. I wanted to take some time this afternoon to answer some of your questions about Imprudence. Specifically: where we’re at, what we’re working on, and just what this Imprudence thing is all about, anyway. First, some common questions we’ve been asked this week:
Will you be including spellcheck/translate in Imprudence? Yes. Both those features (along with the right click context menu) will be in the next weekly release. You’ve spoken, we’ve listened, it’ll be in there
Does Imprudence have X/Y/Z feature? Chances are we do Imprudence is surprisingly rich in features. I recommend taking some time to explore around the UI and menus. You’ll probably be surprised by just what’s in there.
Imprudence rezzes slowly. What’s up with that? Unlike the SL viewer, Imprudence uses OpenJPEG to render textures instead of llkdu, which is a proprietary library we cannot legally distribute. There is a workaround if texture rezzing is causing slowness/stuttering for you, though: copy over llkdu from an installation of Second Life 1.23.5. This will make Imprudence rez textures exactly as the SL viewer would. It’s a problem we’re constantly working on.
I found a bug. When will it be fixed? It depends on the bug. Imprudence has two release cycles: the main “stable” release, and a weekly “experimental” release. We just released 1.3 RC2 yesterday and it’s chock-full of major bug fixes. If your bug isn’t fixed there, chances are it will be fixed in a weekly sometime soon.
I don’t like the font. Can I change it? You can, but I’d give the included font a chance, first. Getting used to a new font can be a little jarring, but once you do you’ll wonder how you lived without it. That being said, we know the included font has its own problems. We’re working on font selection for a future version of Imprudence. In the meantime, you can change the default font by copying the font files in the “fonts” folder in your default install, then opening fonts.xml file in skins/default/xui/en-us. Change the file listed under “SansSerif” from LiberationSans-Regular.ttf to the font name you copied and you’re good to go. Someone’s already done that for DejaVu in our forums.
I just don’t like Imprudence. That’s fine. Imprudence won’t ever work for everybody, but we really do try hard provide the best viewer experience we can. If something’s bothering you, or there’s a feature you think we should include/change, please let us know. We can’t do this without user feedback–that includes both the good and the bad. So long as you give us a fair shot, that’s all we can ask.
Can you trust us? I understand that the concept of Third-Party Viewers has taken a hit lately, but if you have any concerns about us I invite you to look over what we do to answer them. We’re fully opensource and transparent. Our source–including the source of the libraries we use–is posted on our website. At any time, you’re able to checkout and compile the latest source from our repository, or review it to see what we’re working on. Our meetings happen every Wednesday at noon PST on Hoagie on 3rd Rock Grid, with transcripts posted to the wiki afterward. We believe very strongly in opensource, which means the more eyeballs looking at what we do, the better. Being open and forthright is a policy we take very seriously.
We’re also quickly gearing into a more community support and feedback approach. Already, you can follow the latest news on Imprudence on twitter @ImpViewer and on plurk at http://plurk.com/imprudence. We’ve received some great feedback from these channels, as well as from our forums.
Finally, as for what we’re all about, improving the user experience has always been the central goal of Imprudence. It’s the reason we started the viewer, and why we continue to volunteer our time in developing it. I know you might have features you miss, but stick around, we’re working on it, trust me. I can’t wait to share all the features/improvements that will be coming out soon (for example, did you know you can mute group chat now? Totally true. Give it a try in RC2). And keep that feedback coming in the meantime! We really can’t do this without you guys
June 25th, 2010 by Jacek Antonelli
You may have noticed that Imprudence has been missing from the Second Life Viewer Directory ever since Imprudence 1.3 beta 5 was released this Wednesday. We’ve received many questions about this, in the forums and elsewhere. Some people have wondered if Linden Lab removed us for being non-compliant, or if we removed ourselves as some sort of protest. Neither of these is true; the reality much more boring.
Because of the way the viewer directory is programmed, a Linden Lab employee must manually process all changes submitted to the directory. Unfortunately, until the changes are processed, the viewer disappears from the list entirely. So, when I tried to update the download links for Imprudence 1.3 beta 5, Imprudence disappeared from the list. If I had known how long the wait would be, or how much confusion it would cause, I would have posted about this earlier. But, I’ve submitted a second update to make it simply point to our Downloads page instead of directly to the files, so thankfully we won’t have to go through this again. (I’ve also filed a JIRA ticket to request that the site be improved, if you want to follow along.)
So, to be clear: Imprudence was not removed from the directory, just temporarily hidden while the new links are processed. Imprudence is still compliant with Linden Lab’s third-party viewer policy, and it’s still safe to use Imprudence to connect to Second Life. I expect Imprudence to be visible on the list again later today, or Monday at the latest.
Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to try out 1.3 beta 5!
Update June 28: Imprudence is now visible in the directory again.
January 31st, 2010 by Jacek Antonelli
Hi ho, friends! It’s time for another status update from the Imprudence team!
January has been somewhat of a slow month in terms of viewer development, due to RL obligations for Armin and McCabe, and myself feeling a bit under the weather. Even so, we have been making progress on Imprudence 1.3, fixing the issues you guys reported from our 1.3 merge test build. I want to send out a heartfelt “Thank you!” to everyone who tried out the test build and reported issues in the forums and comments. You guys really came through for us, identifying a wide range of issues for us to fix. We really appreciate your assistance and feedback!
The other bit of news is that in-world “Imprudence Viewer” groups are now open in both Second Life and OSGrid! If you have a group slot available, joining the group is a great way to show that you love Imprudence, and to support us by raising awareness of the viewer. The groups have a variety of fun group titles, including “\m/ Imprudence \m/”, “Imprudence Rocks!”, and the oh-so-tasteful “I do it Imprudently”. 
To join the group, do a “People” search for me (Jacek Antonelli), then find the group in my groups list. (Alas, Imprudence’s group search does not yet work in OSGrid.)
That’s all the news for now. We’ll continue to post updates as we make progress on Imprudence 1.3. Ta ta!
December 31st, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Greetings all, and happy (soon to be) new year! I thought I’d take a moment to update you all on the current goings-on of Imprudence.
The first bit of news is that Armin has been working on compiling Imprudence for 64-bit Linux. He has made good progress, and we hope to be able to offer 64-bit Linux versions in future releases. He needs some more testers to try it out and give him feedback, so if you’d like to run Imprudence on your 64-bit Linux box, have a look in the forums!
The second bit of news is that starting in 1.3 we will be offering an option to use an alternative pie menu layout that is similar to the menus in SL 1.22 and earlier, but with a few new menu items for features SL doesn’t have. We believe that our current pie menu layout is more self-consistent and easier to learn than SL’s layout, but we understand that a new layout can be a significant source of frustration for users who have the old layout ingrained from years of use. (In other words, it can be annoying as hell until you get used to it.) We haven’t yet decided which layout will be the default, but you will definitely be able to choose which one you want.
The third bit of news is that we will be having a competition or commission to create new viewer skins for Imprudence. We’re looking for a well designed skin to give Imprudence its own look and feel. Being an open source volunteer project, we don’t have a lot of cash to throw around, but there will be modest cash prizes for the selected skin(s). More details to come.
The final bit of news is that we’re planning to release some early test builds this weekend. We’ve been working on rebasing Imprudence to the SL 1.23.5 source, which will bring full support for “Adult” areas and search results and many other enhancements to Imprudence, including experimental shadow support.
The test builds are essentially Imprudence 1.2 + SL 1.23, so they won’t have the other awesome new stuff we’ll be adding in 1.3, like font controls, jiggly boobs, built-in animation overrider, or prim import/export as HPA. We’re still working on all that stuff. But while we’re doing that, we need you guys to doubly-triply-quadruply check that all the current stuff still works right and that we haven’t missed anything!
We should have the Imprudence “1.2 and a half” test builds out this weekend. Stay tuned to this blog for that announcement.
November 17th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
The Imprudence 1.2 development cycle has taken a lot longer than we had hoped, but it’s finally coming to completion. With some luck, we hope to release the final version of 1.2 tonight or tomorrow!
The most recent delay was due to our efforts to ensure that we’re giving proper credit and respecting the licenses of all the various software libraries that we use and distribute with the viewer. We may be imprudent about changing the viewer UI, but we take our obligations under these licenses quite seriously.
This has been a tedious and wearisome process, as there are 50 or more libraries used by Imprudence, considering all operating systems. For each one, we have had to read and understand our obligations, verify that we are fulfilling them, and in many cases correct errors or omissions. Here are some examples of the obligations we have had to check:
- Nearly all of the libraries require that we publish its copyright and license notices, although the details vary from library to library. It generally takes 5-10 minutes per library to find the information and verify that we are giving proper credit, or to fix or add an incorrect or missing notice.
- As well as distributing the libraries with the finished Imprudence installers for our users’ convenience, we also package them up individually for use by developers who want to compile Imprudence themselves. Since those packages count as distribution, we also have to make sure we’re including proper credit in each of those packages, which is another chore in itself, adding another tedious 5 or so minutes per library. (That’s not mentioning the 20-30 minutes it took to create each package in the first place. Oof.)
- Some libraries (in particular, those licensed under the GPL or LGPL) also require that we also offer the source code if we distribute them in compiled form. So, we have had to locate and host a copy of the source code for each of those libraries alongside the compiled packages. (You can find the sources here. We are still in the process of collecting all the necessary source packages, but should be done soon.)
On average, it takes about 20 minutes per library to verify and possibly fix all the details. Multiply that by 50 libraries (it comes out to nearly 17 hours), and consider the dullness of the chore, and you’ll begin to understand how much fun it was not. But as tedious and thankless a task as it is, it’s important to ensure that the library developers are given proper credit for their work (not to mention our legal obligation to do so).
Despite all that effort, we may have made a mistake or two. (Indeed, we’ve found at least one serious mistake of this kind in Linden Lab’s own library distributions. We will be privately contacting them soon so that they can fix it.) If you find an error in the way we’ve dealt with the licenses for any of the software we distribute, please don’t hesitate to contact me so that we can put things to right as soon as possible.
September 28th, 2009 by McCabe Maxsted
With the 1.2 beta coming up, I’ve updated our How To Compile page. The Windows build instructions should be a bit more straightforward, and I’ve added some missing links, as well as instructions for building with Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft’s free C++ compiler, which is now supported in develop.py (would love to know if Visual Studio 2008 works; anyone want to test and/or submit patches?). The downloads page is also up to date with links to the latest source.
As some of you might have noticed, there were a few annoyances when compiling Imprudence 1.1 on Windows. These should all be fixed in 1.2 (if not, lemme know on the forums, or better yet submit a patch to fix it). Cheers.
September 23rd, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
The end of September draws near, so we’re starting to wrap up the development cycle for Imprudence 1.2. The emphasis now is on testing and polishing everything to make sure it’s done right.
Unfortunately, the improved user account manager feature will not be part of 1.2, as it was not on track to be ready in time. Instead, we’ll ship 1.2 with a polished version of Meerkat’s grid manager (which works fine, but is not as nice to use as we would like), then include the user account manager in 1.3.
But there’s good news: we’re planning to put out a 1.2 release candidate this week. That will give you, our kind, loving, and beautiful users, a chance to try things out and give us feedback on anything that’s not working right (which hopefully won’t be much). Then we’ll fix up what we can, and have the 1.2 final released next Wednesday!
Now, I had better get back to work!
September 19th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
A quick recap from this past Tuesday’s ImpDev meetup:
- Jacek has been focusing on the login manager feature. She hit a mental block for a while, but has gotten past it and is making good progress. Still, she expects it to keep her busy until the end of the month, and possibly a bit longer. If it’s not ready in time, we’ll ship 1.2 with Meerkat’s grid manager interface as a temporary solution, but won’t delay the 1.2 release.
- McCabe has been making enhancements and fixing bugs in many areas, including the new Windlight quick-access toolbar tab and avatar scanner, as well as an improved layout for avatar profiles and other cool stuff!
- Things still seem on track for releasing 1.2 by the end of the month!
Full transcript on the wiki, as usual.
September 10th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Here’s a quicky status update. As usual, full summary and transcript from our weekly meetup are available on the wiki.
- Jacek has imported RLVa and Meerkat’s object backup feature. Still some polishing left to do. Login manager is next on the list after that.
- McCabe has imported (or will soon be importing) several Emerald features: Double click inworld to TP; Asset (texture) browser; Animation list; Fetch inventory at startup; Phantom avatar; Sit anywhere; Show object’s previous owner; New prim presets in the create tab; Set chat channel; Draw distance slider.
- (We’ll be borrowing other Emerald features later, but we don’t want to get carried away and miss our deadline!)
- Everything is on track to have Imprudence 1.2 ready before the end of September! \o/
September 1st, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
It was one year ago today that McCabe and I launched the Imprudence Viewer project with the goal of greatly improving the usability of the viewer through a more open, pro-change, community-driven development process.
A great deal has happened since then; some good, some bad. There have been unexpected developments, and surprising changes in the viewer landscape. We’ve made a good deal of progress, but perhaps not as much as we wanted to.
The first few months of Imprudence went fairly smoothly. We established the project online, started discussion, generated interest, and pushed out the first release candidate version by mid-November, and the first full release version, Imprudence 1.0, just a month later. It worked fairly well, but it was missing some major features: sound, streaming music and video, and voice chat.
Linden Lab uses properietary software for those features, which meant that we would have to replace them with open source software. Unfortunately, the struggle to do that — and to get it to work across all platforms — took over 4 long, grueling, frustrating months, and thoroughly burnt us both out. Then to make matters worst, when we were nearly recovered and ready to start again, I was loaded down with a stressful and never-ending project at work, which very nearly burnt me out all over again!
So, although Imprudence has been around for a year, only the first four were spent at a healthy pace of development. The past eight months have, rather unfortunately, resulted in very little visible progress on Imprudence.
In the meantime, new viewers have come to the foreground. Emerald appeared on the scene this past spring, and has introduced a great many useful new features. Meerkat, although founded around the same time as Imprudence, finally established itself this summer with new releases boasting an object backup tool and enhanced inter-grid support. And of course, Linden Lab launched its Snowglobe project, attempting to alleviate many of the same development problems that prompted us to start Imprudence in the first place.
Naturally, with Imprudence’s lack of visible progress, the attention of most third-party viewer users and developers shifted to these other viewers. Speaking candidly, Imprudence has become mostly irrelevant.
This sobering thought raises the question: “So, what are you going to do about it?”
Our answer is simple: We’re gonna kick it up a fuckin’ notch, that’s what!
The first order of business is to “catch up” and become active again. We’re aiming to release Imprudence 1.2 by the end of September. The key features of that release will be:
- Object import/export support, borrowed from Meerkat.
- Account/grid manager. Also borrowed from Meerkat, but we’ll be giving it a major usability overhaul.
- RestrainedLife API support via Kitty Barnett’s RLVa.
- Many smaller features from Emerald (avatar scanner, phantom mode, sit anywhere, double-click to teleport, and perhaps others).
- Rebased to SL 1.22 source. In the interest of getting Imprudence 1.2 released ASAP, we’re putting off updating to SL 1.23 until Imprudence 1.3.
Also, we’re welcoming Armin Weatherwax as a full-fledged Imprudence team member, joining McCabe and myself. Armin has been a great help over the past year, contributing many patches and porting over features from other viewers and from JIRA patches. Indeed, Armin has already ported several of the main features that will be in 1.2, as well as many smaller enhancements. So, it’s about time that we officially recognized his efforts! Thank you, Armin, and welcome aboard!
Imprudence’s future after 1.2 is still being charted, but it’s safe to assume that we’ll soon be contributing new features, fixes, and usability enhancements to the third party viewer ecosystem again. We’re meeting every week to discuss and plan Imprudence’s development, and we’ll continue to post regular updates here on the blog, as well as transcripts on the wiki.
So, happy birthday Imprudence, and cheers for the year to come!