Kokua/Imprudence Blog

Imprudence 1.2 Released

After many months of development, we’re extremely pleased to say that Imprudence 1.2 is finally available!

If you’re new to Imprudence, you should know that the purpose of the project is to improve the viewer’s usability: to clean up the UI, add new tools that make the viewer more useful, and make a more satisfying viewer experience. Part of that process involves making changes to the UI, which can cause some temporary confusion if you’re expecting the UI to be the same as the UI of other viewers. So be aware: the UI is not entirely the same! Give it time, and we’re sure it will grow on you. If you can’t find something in the UI, just ask in the forums.

Imprudence 1.2 adds many new features, fixes, and improvements to the viewer experience. Here are a just few of the new features and improvements since Imprudence 1.1:

• Backup your builds, your scripts, and your avatar’s shape. If you created it, you have the right to back it up or move it to a different grid. (See Content Backup for more info).
• Double-click Teleport and Autopilot. We’ve taken the popular double-click teleport feature and improved upon it. The default behavior can now be set in Preferences > Input & Camera. We’ve also added an ignorable confirmation dialog to reduce the chance of accidental teleportations.
• Improved minimap with built-in radar. The minimap now has enhanced zooming and panning, a built-in avatar radar to see who is nearby, plus optional chat notices when avatars enter or leave chat range or the sim. (Enable minimap notify in Preferences > General.)
• Improved OpenSim support. We’ve added a list of popular grids to connect to, as well as a grid manager so you can add your own. You can also enjoy many building benefits when using OpenSim, such as the ability to build and edit prims larger than 10m on a side!
• Restrained Life support. Thanks to RLVa by Kitty Barnett, Imprudence now supports the Restrained Life API for BDSM items and scripted gadgets.
• Windlight toolbar. We’ve added a new tab along the bottom of the screen for quick access to your Windlight presets and certain graphics options. We’ve also added a variety of Windlight presets from Ana Lutetia, CodeBastard Redgrave, and Torley Linden!
• Numerous other features that improve the viewer experience, such as double-click to wear attachments in Inventory, optional vertical IM tabs (in Preferences > Communication), unread IM count, search inventory by creator or description, better profile window layout, select default chat channel, Link/Unlink in the Build window, sim avatar counts on the World Map, and many more.

For full details about all the changes and improvements we’ve made, please refer to our extensive (and rather intimidating) Release Notes!

Now without further ado, the goodies (you should download these even if you have downloaded 1.2.0 before):

• Linux
• Mac OS X (Intel only)
• Windows XP (SSE2 Optimized)
• Windows Vista/7 (SSE2 Optimized)
• Visit the Downloads page for the source code and md5sums for the downloads, if you’re interested in that stuff.

We want to hear about your experiences with Imprudence — both positive and negative! Please post your feedback in the forums or comment here on the blog. Thank you! <3

Enjoy!

Super Happy Software License Fun Time

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.