Cool VL Viewer forum

This has long been a problem for me whenever I try to use Cool VL Viewer in OS X. I download the client and install it. Upon opening it, I am unable to input any text in the name and password fields. What could be the issue?

Hardware: iMac 21.5 inch (late 2013)
OS: El Capitan

Thank you very much.

Okay, I figured the issue out. For anyone that has this problem:

If you are using an Asian character IME system (Japanese/Chinese/Korean), even if you have it set to English characters, Cool VL does not accept it or at least in my case.

I had to change my input to US system, but UK or Canada would probably also work.

Then I was hit with Japanese characters not being displayed as I was typing them in world, so that's another hurdle I have to figure out.

Okay, so I discovered a few things when running Cool VL Viewer:

1. [LOG IN SCREEN]
When opening CoolVL, it will not accept text input when the system is using a IME for Japanese (and probably Chinese/Korean too)
Even if you have the input mode set to english characters, nothing is inputted for the user ID and password fields. You MUST turn the IME off and switch it to something else such as US English. I checked using Firestorm and it accepted IME input normally for ID and password fields.

2. Inputting Japanese in chat gives me dots. Maybe this is a font issue? Does it need to be changed to unicode or something?
I tried Firestorm in comparison and I was able to input Japanese with no problem when chatting.


Hardware: iMac 21.5 inch (Late 2012)
OS: El Capitan (10.11.3)

My viewer build is: Cool VL Viewer 1.26.16 (9) Jan 23 2016 05:22:49



I hope these issues are not too difficult to solve because I'd love to be able to use CoolVL Viewer.

If you need additional information, please let me know and I'll do my best to provide it!
Thank you very much!

This is not a bug... At worst, it's a missing feature. The MacOS-X builds of the Cool VL Viewer are still using the Carbon API, while other viewers migrated to the Cocoa API, which would explain the differences you are experiencing.

While the migration to Cocoa will also happen, at some point, for the Cool VL Viewer, I cannot tell you when. The problem with MacOS-X support is that I know almost nothing about this OS (I don't even have a Mac at hand to experiment, and should I have one, I won't have any time to devote to such an experimentation).

Please, remember that the Cool VL Viewer has always been and will always be a Linux viewer (that happens to be also compiled for Windows, and, when someone kind enough volunteers, for MacOS-X: see the long list of MacOS-X builders for the past 8 years in the Credits line of the About floater).

As for supporting non-English languages, I simply can't devote any time to this either: I'm myself French and yet, as you can see by yourself, there is not even a French UI for the Cool VL Viewer; I just don't have time for it (and for all other languages, I don't even have the necessary knowledge).

So, your best bet, for now, if you insist on using your own language (while SL is US-based and thus, "English-speaking"), is to use another viewer supporting it. Sorry...

Henri, thank you for your quick reply. I see, I didn't know CoolVL was still using the Carbon API. Good to know!

I used to use CoolVL on Windows back in the day, so I just want to say it's too bad I can't stick with CoolVL, but I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making it awesome.

If I'm ever running Windows/Linux, your viewer is the one for me!

Thanks so much.

I regularly use Chinese pinyin input methods with Cool VL Viewer on Mac without problems, but unfortunately my ability to help with Japanese is limited because I don't know that language. I had never thought to try to log in to Second Life using my Chinese input method (QIM). Yes I find that having QIM on blocks entering my avatar-name and password, but does SL let you choose a Japanese writing name and password in the first place? Once I have logged in to SL, I find that the OS/X built-in Japanese input method works in chat. At least I can use the Hiragana input method, and the few words of Japanese I know can be selected in Hiragana and kanji. They display correctly on my screen too. Sorry if I'm using the wrong terminology, but I don't know Japanese.

Oh... I see that the OP is using El Capitan. I'm still on Yosemite. There are known problems with Japanese support in SL under El Capitan, because Apple changed the default font files that they offer, and LL has not updated the list of fonts in SL's configuration file. SL is looking for a file called 华文细黑.ttf which is no longer there. Here is the JIRA ticket: http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-16318. Yes, that is a Firestorm ticket but the same problem affects all viewers I believe.

I should perhaps say that I live in Australia so the "primary" country keyboard set-up I have is English. I have Chinese input method set up so that I can toggle into my native language with the standard Cmd-Spacebar.