Cool VL Viewer forum

Hi there...

I had a few ideas about handling of display names...

all this only applies when display names are enabled in one of the two forms

- the fake name "resident" should be suppressable (option in preferences)
- the whole [legacy name] stuff could be omissed if the display name is the same as the firstname of the legacy name, basically eliminating displays such as "Lance [Lance Resident]"
- (might be a bit more complicated) the construct [legacy name] could be omitted if the display name matches the regular expression .*legacy.*name.* ... in other words, if all parts of the legacy name appear in the display name, the legacy name is not shown, no matter what else is in the display name. (Eliminates constructs such as "Lance Corrimal-Tomorrow [Lance Corrimal]")

all this would of course be optional, and off by default.

I am strongly against this. Legacy names are the *only* reliable way to distinguish an avatar from the others in their actions, belongings and sayings. For this reason, the legacy name must stay 100% unambiguous and untouched. If you don't care that much about legacy names, you still have the option to keep only the display names in chat/IMs and on screen.

but in case of a new account (one without a lastname), that "Resident" is not part of their name. The user name really is "Lance", not "Lance Resident".

You are mixing user names (lance.corrimal for your old avatar or lance for a new resident) with legacy names ("Lance Corrimal" and "Lance Resident").. The viewer does not display user names (since those don't even respect the case of the actual legacy name and also because user names make no sense whatsoever for OpenSim grids), but legacy names.

ok, let me just simply drop all those conflicting terms and go "by example"


[*] old account, name is Lance Corrimal, no display name set, or display name is exactly the same as the legacy name - handling stays as is
[*] old account, name is Lance Corrimal, display name is set to Lance Corrimal-Tomorrow - i'd like the option to suppress the legacy name because all parts of the legacy name appear in the display name in the same order
[*] old account, name is Lance Corrimal, display name is set to whatever else comes to mind - the option from the point above would not affect this one
[*] new account, name is "lance", no display name set, I'd want the option to hide the "resident" part, showing only "lance" even with display names turned off.
[*] new account, name is lance, display name set to lance corrimal, i would want the option to see "Lance Corrimal [lance]" instead of "Lance Corrimal [lance Resident]"

bye,
LC

Ok,

what would you think of this approach:

get the username, and get the display name of an avi.

if "smart" handling is off (which would be the default), the displaynames are handled as they are now in cool 17.

if "smart" display names are switched on, the following will be done:

take the display name, convert it all to lower case, replace all spaces by dots.

if the user name (lance.corrimal) is exactly the same as the result of that operation, do not show the username (this would also get rid of the unneeded "resident" part which technically doesn't really exists anyways)

(optional) if the resulting string from that replacing operation matches the regular expression .*username.* (as in, the username with something tacked to it at beginning and/or end), the username is not shown.


on second thought this could actually be a fourth option for the "how to handle display names" radiobuttons.

In today's, release (v1.25.0.18), I added a new setting so that the "Resident" fake last name for new users can be omitted entirely: it also allows to avoid displays such as "JohnDoe [JohnDoe Resident]" which is now displayed as "JohnDoe" only (i.e., when a new user didn't set a display name, only their name (which is the non-lower-cased user name) is displayed).