Kokua 6.4.13 Release Notes
- Chorazin Allen
This release brings Kokua to parity with LL Viewer 6.4.13 ( https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.4.13.555567.html ) which delivers improvements related to jellydoll/impostor rendering.
It also includes a number of features ported over from other viewers following requests from users.
We begin with a big thankyou to Kitty Barnett for creating two major features some years ago which have been ported into Kokua from Catznip. Similarly, the Firestorm team deserve their regular kudos too for creating some of the other changes/features ported into this release. Individual authors are noted below.
Improved Group Floaters
Previously Group information was presented as one tab within the People floater and accessing sections of Group information such as Notices were presented in the same way. This made it cumbersome to get to a group action such as sending a notice and also enforced a restriction that only one group could be operated on at a time.
Group information now appears in an independent floater instead of embedded within the People tab. This allows multiple groups to viewed simultaneously. Going further, creating a notice is a floater of its own which again allows notices for multiple groups to be shown and written together and also allows for shortcuts directly to creating a notice to be added to right click menus (notably in the Group list in the People tab and also on Group names within the Conversations floater).
The new behaviour is enabled by default but can be switched back to the former embedded behaviour using an option on Preferences / Kokua / General.
Original implementation by Kitty Barnett.
Block List, Object Derendering and Avatar Rendering Exceptions
The second area consists of a new floater which centralises the Block/Mute list (which is therefore removed from the People floater), session and permanent (more precisely, multi-session until lifted) derendering and exceptions to the default avatar rendering threshold/complexity.
Right clicking an object will present options to Mute/Block and derender for a session or longer. While “permanent” is used for brevity in the menus it is more precise to say multi-session and until lifted since it can be reversed.
Right clicking an avatar allows them to be blocked and their rendering status to be changed.
Note that when a derendered object is removed from the list it will not reappear until the object is next “new” to the viewer. This can be relied upon to be the next login but may happen sooner after teleporting away and returning.
A facility to block/mute objects has been added to Sound Explorer however there are some caveats to be aware of due to differences between sound and object handling. First, blocking/muting will generally not work if an object is in a different region or is beyond draw distance. Next, you may find that after blocking/muting an object the sound still plays. This typically happens when several objects are all playing the same sound - each object playing the sound must be blocked/muted before the sound will stop. The Sound Explorer has a facility to pause the listing which can be handy when trying to select several items.
In situations where the object to be blocked/muted is already known it may be easier to right click the object or locate it using Area Search and block/mute it from there.
Icons for the new Block/Rendering floater and the Sound Explorer have been added to the Toolbox for use with the bottom and side edge toolbars.
Original implementation by Kitty Barnett.
Configuration options for chat message toasts
A new options panel has been added in Kokua / Preferences / Chat to allow many parameters relating to chat toasts to be tweaked, including their width. This is a port from Firestorm, originally by Zi with contributions by Ansariel and others.
Active Gestures
Also ported from Firestorm is an option on the Gestures floater to only show those currently active, originally implemented by Pantera Polnocy.
Issues Resolved
The usual list of issues resolved in this release follows. As usual, a few need additional notes:-
KKA-801: The cryptic title for this one refers to Kokua’s notifications whether an IM is going to be blocked before being sent or received. This featured needed updating to match the new group-related features added in RLV 2.9.29.0
KKA-797: This bug affected the NORLV version only - sometimes the People/Nearby panel would go blank, typically after someone nearby spoke. This one has been present for a while but we’ve only recently managed to find a reliable way to reproduce it.
KKA-804: It is intentional RLV behaviour that HUD objects cannot be hidden in snapshots if any are locked in place, however this is also a FAQ. To make it clearer that this behaviour is intended the option to turn the HUDs on and off will be faded in the menus and on the Snapshot floater when it cannot be changed.
KKA-795 and KKA-802 are internal with no change to the user interface.
KKA-810: startim, shownearby, tplocal, showhovertextworld and share are added to the login restrictions if the login blackout is enabled in RLV. This will also appear in a future RLV version from Marine.
KKA-813: If @shownames:uuid was used and was the last @shownames related restriction/exception to be lifted the Nearby panel in the People floater would not be re-enabled (the bug has been present since RLV 2.9.20 but only just noticed). This is different to KKA-797 which only affected NORLV.
Finally, KKA-796, KKA-806, KKA-798 and KKA-800 relate to the features described above.
Bug
[KKA-795] - Windows crash logger persists
[KKA-797] - people do not appear in my nearby tab
[KKA-801] - KKA-670 needs a code review
[KKA-802] - Viewer AO and null keys
[KKA-813] - @shownames:uuid causes avatar list to stay hidden in People:Nearby
New Feature
[KKA-796] - Blacklist sound
[KKA-804] - Add a notification when HUDs can't be turned off for snapshots
[KKA-806] - Port over nearby chat toast adjustment and other toast UI features
[KKA-810] - Include startim in viewer startup restrictions