User:Andrew Linden/Office Hours/2008 06 24

Transcript of Andrew Linden's office hours:

[11:13]	Teravus Ousley:	How are you today Simon?
[11:13]	Simon Linden:	Doing OK ... scrambling to get one fix for a new server so we can pass it to QA and eventually get it out
[11:13]	Teravus Ousley:	:D
[11:14]	Gaius Goodliffe:	Anything sexy? :)
[11:14]	Simon Linden:	Only for hard-core geeks - faster XML parsing!
[11:14]	Teravus Ousley:	yay
[11:14]	Teravus Ousley:	.. that's a nasty point of contention
[11:14]	Simon Linden:	There should be a slight improvement to TP arrivals and other places where we're doing a lot of parsing
[11:15]	Gaius Goodliffe:	Good, good, faster anything is always better. Especially basic infrastructure used all over...
[11:15]	Teravus Ousley has been using .NET System.Xml.XmlSerialization
[11:16]	Simon Linden:	We use the James Clark "expat" XML parser ... it's pretty common, but can be slow.
[11:16]	Teravus Ousley:	heh, some, (myself included) think that the System.Xml.XmlSerializtion format is a bit bloated :D
[11:17]	Simon Linden:	Some (myself include) think XML is bloated :)
[11:17]	Simon Linden:	I know it's readable text, etc. but for speed I wish SL had a more efficient binary protocol for a lot of data
[11:19]	Teravus Ousley:	http://teravus.wmcv.com/googletester/SceneObjectPart0.xsd
[11:19]	Gaius Goodliffe:	Yeah, it's overused for things it's really not good for. It's a wonderful data interchange format for arbitrary programs, but if you have more control over both ends, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
[11:19]	Teravus Ousley:	that's a copy of our xsd
[11:20]	Gaius Goodliffe:	Efficiency is pretty much the opposite of what it was designed for.
[11:20]	Simon Linden:	Exactly ... and unfortunately the inertia involved with making a change is huge. I'm not really involved at that end, but ran into it when trying to track down some of the bottlenecks
[11:21]	Arawn Spitteler recalls SL was cobbled togeather with off-the-shelf parts: Of course, they're going metric, without telling anybody.
[11:21]	Simon Linden:	Hehe ... at least they went metric. I can only imagine if world positions were done in feet ...
[11:21]	Gaius Goodliffe nods.
[11:21]	Teravus Ousley:	hehe
[11:22]	Teravus Ousley thinks Andrew had something to do with that..
[11:22]	Simon Linden:	Probably ... he was there at the start
[11:23]	Teravus Ousley notes that most physics engines were developed with Meters in mind as the unit
[11:23]	Teravus Ousley:	though.. you could use anything..
[11:23]	Simon Linden:	I think I'm going to cut short the office hours if there are no pressing questions or bugs ... I want to get this code out to testing today
[11:23]	Gaius Goodliffe:	millifurlongs?
[11:23]	Teravus Ousley:	hehe, yep. ok
[11:23]	Simon Linden:	furlongs and fortnights
[11:23]	Arawn Spitteler posits a changeover to Hex-Plank Measure, just before we find something better.
[11:23]	Teravus Ousley:	.. see you Thursday then.
[11:24]	Simon Linden:	Thanks for coming, see you then
[11:24]	Gaius Goodliffe:	Alrighty, good luck :)
[11:24]	Teravus Ousley presumes that the majority of people are at the SLB5