MagnaMural: Texture Display & Organizer
Public Domain Version
Manual
by Apollia Pirandello
For a much more brief summary of commands, go to this page: MagnaMural Commands Summary
A zip file of this manual, the Commands Summary, the MagnaMural's and MagnaMural Updater's scripts, and the MagnaMural Main Page is here. (128 KB)
Text chat commands are formatted like this.
Menus, buttons, and other things you can click with a mouse are formatted like this.
Window titles and other things you don't have to click are formatted like this.
About the MagnaMural and Where to Get It
The MagnaMural: Texture Display & Organizer is a scripted item I created in Second Life. It enables you to easily browse, display, organize, and store your textures.
It used to be a commercial product, but, I finally realized that I have a moral problem with selling closed-source software even in Second Life, and so I placed it into the public domain. One thing that helped me make up my mind to do this was this essay by Richard Stallman, Why Software Should Be Free.
You can get the MagnaMural for free at OnRez, SLExchange, or within Second Life. To find it within Second Life, log into Second Life and press the Search button. Then, click the People tab, and search for Apollia Pirandello. You'll find more details in the Picks section of my profile.
If you like it, or even if you don't, I welcome donations of any size.
Basic Description
The MagnaMural is a 4-prim screen which enables you to easily browse, display, organize, and store your textures.
It is very easy to control. Every feature of the MagnaMural is accessible through text chat commands, which can either be spoken in regular "audible" text chat, or on the silent chat channel of your choice, from 1 to 9999. Also, gestures can be made to give any text chat command you like. And, clicks cause a few things to happen as well. Once you click anywhere on the MagnaMural, that activates the MagnaMural's capability to respond to text chat commands.
You can navigate through your textures forward, backward, or randomly, merely by clicking one of its 4 prims, using a gesture, or giving a text chat command. Also, when the MagnaMural is listening for text chat commands, you can instantly go directly to any texture within the MagnaMural just by saying its number.
The gestures included with the MagnaMural allow you to issue commands to the MagnaMural simply by pressing an F-key on your keyboard. You can customize the included gestures, and design your own gestures to issue any command you want to the MagnaMural.
Many of the major features can also be accessed by clicking Panel 3 (the lower left prim), which will make a blue dialog pop-up, full of buttons, appear in the upper right corner of your screen.
Since it's full-perms, open source, and public domain, you can also modify the MagnaMural in any way and for any purpose you like.
Dimensions
The MagnaMural has a maximum size of 20m x 20m, allowing you to see your textures twice as large as you could see them on a single regular prim (since a single regular prim only has a maximum size of 10m x 10m). The MagnaMural has a minimum size of 0.04m x 0.04m.
It is easily resizeable to any width and height through text chat commands, and it has four shape modes.
Three of these shape modes cause the MagnaMural's width and height to maintain a certain proportion to each other, so you only need to say the width for the MagnaMural to resize itself appropriately.
- Square Shape - shaped like a square. Maximum size: 20m x 20m.
- Screenshot Shape - properly proportioned for screenshots and other pictures which were originally 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1600 x 1200, or something like that. This is also the same proportion as a standard 4:3 television screen. Maximum size: 20m x 15m.
- Long Rectangle Shape - half as tall as it is wide. Good for long rectangular pictures which are either tall and narrow, or short and wide - like panoramic pictures. Maximum size: 20m x 10m.
And then there's:
- Freeform Shape Mode - so you can name both the width and height of your choice.
The thickness is always (and unchangeably) 0.010 m.
Textures Included
The MagnaMural comes with over 200 textures from Second Life's Library, plus some Second Life screenshots (and one Entropia Universe screenshot) which I myself took, and some public domain pictures from the Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/ , which I uploaded to Second Life myself. All the textures have full permissions (copy, modify, transfer).
(If you're curious to know more about the Wikimedia Commons images, or to see or download the originals, retrieve the texture, right-click on it in your inventory, click on Properties in the little menu that pops up, then, in the window that pops up, look at the Description text field, and go to that URL in your web browser.)
The MagnaMural package also includes a MagnaMural which is empty of all but a single texture, so you won't have to go to the trouble of emptying them of a great many included textures so you can have a MagnaMural with only your own textures.
Various Features, and Ideas for Possible Uses
The MagnaMural is useful for all kinds of things. For instance, you can use it for:
- A giant picture, painting, mural, screenshot, or something, on your wall, that you can change any time.
- Carpeting, a wall or window, or beautiful scenery outside your window, which you can change any time.
- A backdrop for photo shoots or a theater stage which you can change any time.
- A slideshow presentation or photo album, quite visible at a distance. Or even a sign - but please be considerate of your neighbors.
- A window, wall, curtain, door, or something, which you can show or hide, and make solid (impossible to move through) or phantom (possible to move through), anytime you want, through text chat commands.
- If you have your own land - or perhaps even just someone else's land which has streaming video, if you have rights to create objects there, and know what that land's current Media Texture is, and you have that texture and can add it to the MagnaMural - you can use the MagnaMural as a resizeable TV or movie screen by adding the texture picked to be your land's Media Texture, displaying it on the MagnaMural, and playing streaming video in your Second Life client.
Screenshot Shape will give the MagnaMural the same aspect ratio as standard TV screens (4:3), and you can also easily set the MagnaMural to the exact standard widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9 by setting your MagnaMural to 16m x 9m, 8m x 4.5m, 4m x 2.25m, or 2m x 1.125m.
You could get your friends together and have a Mystery Science Theater 3000 party, by watching some ancient public domain movies or TV on streaming video, and making wisecracks.
- To organize your textures. Since the MagnaMural has full permissions, you can make as many MagnaMurals as you want, put your textures in them, and rename the MagnaMurals to whatever you want so you can keep track of what's in them after you take the MagnaMurals into inventory.
A useful container for textures you wish to give away or sell.
- To get an easily copy and pasted list of your textures. When you say
list, the MagnaMural will generate a numbered list for you in alphabetical order of all the textures it contains, which you can copy and paste into a text editor on your computer, or even a Second Life notecard, and jot down your own notes on what the various textures look like.With the help of this list, you will be able to easily find any texture and go to it just by saying its number. You can also easily search the list using your computer's text editor's search features. More details further below.
- To retrieve textures quickly. You can have the MagnaMural immediately give you the texture on display by saying
g. And, if you don't have a huge number of textures stored in the MagnaMural, you can easily retrieve every texture from the MagnaMural.However, if you _do_ have a huge number of textures in the MagnaMural, attempting to retrieve all of the textures contained in it is _not_ recommended. It will take forever for the contents to load, if they ever do - and Second Life crashed on me when I tried to retrieve 3,722 textures at once.
- As far as I know, you can put in as many textures as you want. However, don't put in too many unless you have other backups of those textures, or don't mind probably never being able to retrieve all the thousands of textures at once.
If there are more than several hundred textures in the MagnaMural, Second Life gets to be very slow about loading the contents of the MagnaMural if you try to open it to take its inventory, or if you look at the contents of the MagnaMural in the standard Second Life object Edit window.
You _should_ always be able to retrieve individual textures no matter how many textures are contained - but, with all the inventory and database glitches that happen in Second Life, I wouldn't count on this.
So, to be safe, don't count on the MagnaMural necessarily functioning correctly if you have many hundreds or thousands of textures all in one MagnaMural. And, even if you don't have that many textures in any MagnaMural, always keep backups of your textures and MagnaMurals - and anything else you can copy and want to keep in Second Life.
- If you want to browse multiple textures at once, like a more standard texture browser, multiple MagnaMurals is how you can do it. You can set up the multiple MagnaMurals in any configuration you like, and, through creating a coalesced object, rez them all again in that exact configuration anywhere else you like. More details further below.
- You can also easily retrieve the UUID key of the texture on display, by saying
kin either regular chat or the silent chat channel. For more info on a UUID key is, see this page: http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=UUID This feature will probably only be useful to you if you're into scripting. - You can use the MagnaMural to easily see what a texture looks like when stretched or narrowed to various sizes. In Freeform Shape Mode, you can resize the MagnaMural to whatever width and height you like between 20 m and 0.04 m. (Of course, if you make it really tiny, be careful not to lose it. Turning on the floating text by saying
snmay help you find it). - If you don't want to have to state both the width and height all the time, you can use the aforementioned three shape modes - Square Shape, Screenshot Shape, and Long Rectangle Shape - which cause the MagnaMural's width and height to maintain a certain proportion to each other, so you only need to say the width for the MagnaMural to resize itself appropriately.
- You can delete the single texture the MagnaMural is currently displaying through a text chat command,
tdel.The command is deliberately a hard-to-accidentally-type nonsense word, and this is purposely the only built-in way to delete textures, so you never have to worry about accidentally saying the wrong thing or pressing the wrong button and deleting everything. Additionally, the MagnaMural will ask you to say "y" to confirm you really want to delete that texture.
- Just like any other prim, you can modify the MagnaMural's prims using the standard Second Life object Edit window controls. With them, you can give the MagnaMural such features as partial or complete transparency, metallic shininess, and bumpiness. You can also make it so local lighting and daylight will have an impact on how the picture looks, and make the MagnaMural emanate light itself. More details below.
- You can move the MagnaMural up 1 m by saying
uor pressingF4, and move it down 1 m by sayingjor pressingF3. - You can even wear the MagnaMural as an attachment. It's fully-functional even while used as an attachment. Maybe you could use a pair as changeable sandwich-board signs, or very flat-looking jewelry, or something. Or a wearable TV screen, if you happen to have it displaying the Media Texture of the land you're on..
Controlling your MagnaMural
Each MagnaMural is made up of four prims. I like to refer to its four prims as panels. The operation of the MagnaMural is very simple. There are four ways to control the MagnaMural:
- Clicking a panel.
- Issuing text chat commands in either regular "audible" chat or a silent chat channel from 1 to 9999.
- Using a gesture to issue text chat commands.
- And, clicking Panel 3 and clicking the buttons in the blue dialog pop-up that will appear in the upper right corner of your screen.
The MagnaMural is designed for the personal use of its owner only, so, only the owner can control the MagnaMural. It won't work properly if deeded to a group, so please don't deed it to a group.
First, I'll explain the panels. Depending on which panel you touch (click on), something happens.
Depending on which side of the MagnaMural you're looking at, the layout of the four panels is like this:
| Front | Back | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Here are the command issued when you click on the panels:
- Panel 1: Move backward one texture before the current texture (in alphabetical order).
Panel 2: Move forward one texture after the current texture (in alphabetical order).
Panel 3: Open a blue dialog pop-up in the upper right corner of your screen, which will contain clickable buttons which are largely self-explanatory. You can't break anything or accidentally delete your textures by clicking the buttons, so, feel free to experiment and click them even if you aren't precisely sure yet what they do.
Panel 4: Go to a random texture.
Whenever you click on the MagnaMural, the MagnaMural will begin listening for text chat commands, if it isn't already. (Unless the MagnaMural is in Locked Mode, and you clicked on a panel other than Panel 3 - in that case, nothing will happen).
It should stay on indefinitely while you're actually using it - issuing commands, clicking on it, adding textures, etc. And, so you don't have to worry about shutting it off - if you don't click the MagnaMural, and don't say anything in its presence, and don't change anything in its inventory for 10 minutes, the MagnaMural will go to "sleep" again and stop listening for chat commands. You can tell the MagnaMural to stop listening immediately by saying off.
You can either give chat commands in regular chat, or on the silent chat channel the MagnaMural is set to, and you can also use gestures to issue chat commands to the MagnaMural, audibly or silently. The gestures included with the MagnaMural will silently issue several commands on channel 9.
Before the gestures will work, you have to activate them. To do this, go to your inventory, right-click a gesture (for instance, "MagnaMural - F8 - Forward - Channel 9", and choose Activate from the little menu that pops ups. The gestures can be used by pressing one of the F-keys on your keyboard. The gesture title will tell you which F-key to use.
The gestures included with the MagnaMural will only work if the MagnaMural is set to listen to silent chat channel 9, but you can customize them to use other channels, and to be activated by other keystrokes, and you can even create new gestures to issue whatever commands you want.
You can duplicate a gesture by right-clicking on it in your inventory and selecting Copy from the little menu that pops up, then right-clicking anywhere you want to put the duplicate, and selecting Paste from the little menu that pops up. Then, double-click the duplicate to edit it.
Here are the chat commands and gesture F-keys for the navigation, with multiple ways of saying the same command separated by commas. The commas and dashes aren't part of the command.
d - Move backward one texture before the current texture. Gesture: F7
f - Move forward one texture after the current texture. Gesture: F8
r - Go to a random texture. Gesture: F10
MOST RECENT, m, v - Go to the most recent previously-viewed texture. Gesture: F9
e - Reload current texture. (Quickly goes forward one texture then backward one texture to where you started). Gesture: F5
The Reload command might (or might not) help if the texture is blurry and taking a while to load, and it will definitely help if there are those annoying lines that may temporarily appear in the MagnaMural after you do a resize or change the shape mode. It should also help if, through some fluke of Second Life, a texture hasn't loaded on all panels.
And, to move the MagnaMural itself:
u - Moves the MagnaMural up by 1 m. Gesture: F4
j - Moves the MagnaMural down by 1 m. Gesture: F3
You can go to any texture by saying its number in regular chat or on the silent chat channel (which is 9 by default). For instance, saying /9 12 will go to texture 12.
The textures are organized in alphabetical order, meaning textures with names which are earlier in the alphabet have lower numbers, and textures with names which are later in the alphabet have higher numbers.
To find out the number of the texture you want, there are a couple ways. One, you can have the MagnaMural generate a numbered, alphabetical list of every texture contained in the MagnaMural by saying list.
Two, you can turn on the optional floating text, which hovers above Panel 2. The optional floating text is a display of the number of textures in the MagnaMural, the name of the texture you're currently looking at, and the number of the texture you're currently looking at. The command to show this information is sn (short for "show name/num", and hn will hide it. Saying n or name will reverse whatever the current setting is, as will the the dialog button NAME/NUM.
By default, the silent chat channel is 9, but you can change it to whatever you want (from 1 to 9999) by entering Silent Text Channel Select Mode by saying ch. The MagnaMural will retain its channel setting even if you reset the script - that is, as long as you don't mess with the name of Panel 1, which contains that information in the following format: "MagnaMural ([silent chat channel number])".
Usually, when the (or a) MagnaMural "talks" to you, the silent chat channel number of the MagnaMural "talking" will be displayed at the beginning of the line, for instance, "MagnaMural (9): Going back to most recent previously-displayed texture."
This will make it easy for you to know what the silent chat channel is, and also might make things less confusing in case you have multiple MagnaMurals around which you're using at the same time.
By the way, when the MagnaMural "talks", only you, the owner, can hear it, so you don't have to worry about it disturbing anyone.
Brief Summary of Commands
This information is available in the notecard "*-Astroblahhh.Com MagnaMural Commands Summary - Public Domain", and this other web page, Commands Summary, which is a lot shorter than this manual.
The commands below are case sensitive - that is, it matters whether you use capital or lowercase letters in them. The commands below need to be stated exactly as they are below in order to work - minus the commas and dashes, which aren't part of the commands.
Many commands have more than one way to say them. To distinguish between multiple ways of saying the same command, the commands below are separated by commas.
Navigation
Textures within the MagnaMural are in alphabetical order and are numbered accordingly.
If you type in any number between (and including) 1 and the number of textures contained in the MagnaMural, the MagnaMural will go directly to the texture referred to by that number.
d - Move backward one texture before the current texture. Gesture: F3
f - Move forward one texture after the current texture. Gesture: F4
r - Go to a random texture. Gesture: F10
MOST RECENT, m, v - Go to the most recent previously-viewed texture. Gesture: F9
u - Moves the MagnaMural up by 1 m. Gesture: F8
j - Moves the MagnaMural down by 1 m. Gesture: F7
e - Reload current texture. (Quickly goes forward one texture then backward one texture to where you started). Gesture: F5
The Reload command might (or might not) help if the texture is blurry and taking a while to load, and it will definitely help if there are those annoying lines that may temporarily appear in the MagnaMural after you do a resize or change the shape mode. It should also help if, through some fluke of Second Life, a texture hasn't loaded on all panels.
Texture Retrieval, Deletion and Info
GIVE TEXTURE, g - Gives you a copy of the texture on display.
k - Tells you the UUID key of the texture on display. (For more info on what a UUID key is, see this page: http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=UUID ) This feature will probably only be useful to you if you're into scripting.
tdel - Deletes the current texture on display. This asks you to confirm by saying "y" before anything is actually deleted.
NAME/NUM, name, n - Either displays the texture's name and number in floating text above Panel 2, or hides it if it's already on display.
sn - Shows the texture's name and number in floating text above Panel 2.
hn - Hides the texture's name and number.
LIST, list - Prints list of all textures inside. If there are a lot of textures (like, hundreds or thousands), this will take a long time.
Resizing and Shape Changing
RESIZE, resize, rs - Puts the MagnaMural in Resize Mode, which allows you to reesize the MagnaMural by saying width and possibly height (if the MagnaMural is in Freeform Shape) in chat.
SQUARE, sq - Puts the MagnaMural in Square Shape.
SCREENSHOT, ss - Puts the MagnaMural in Screenshot Shape (which is correctly proportioned for 800x600, etc. screenshots).
LONG RECTANGLE, lr - Puts the MagnaMural in Long Rectangle Shape, which is half as tall as wide.
FREEFORM, ff - Puts the MagnaMural into Freeform Shape, so you can set the width/height of MagnaMural any way you like.
When issuing the commands above, you can also include the width (and possibly height, if the MagnaMural is in Freeform Shape) all in the same line.
Example: sq 5 will make the MagnaMural into a 5m x 5m square.
size, s - Causes the MagnaMural to state its current size.
x - Exits Resize Mode, or Text Color Change Mode, or Silent Chat Channel Select Mode.
e - Reload current texture. (Quickly goes forward one texture then backward one texture to where you started). Gesture: F5
The Reload command might (or might not) help if the texture is blurry and taking a while to load, and it will definitely help if there are those annoying lines that may temporarily appear in the MagnaMural after you do a resize or change the shape mode. It should also help if, through some fluke of Second Life, a texture hasn't loaded on all panels.
Other Settings
TEXT COLOR, color, col - Puts the MagnaMural in Text Color Change Mode, in which you can change the color of the floating text optionally displayed above Panel 2 by stating three numbers in RGB (Red Green Blue) format ranging from 0 to 255. "255 255 255" = white, "0 0 0" = black.
CHANNEL, channel, ch - Puts the MagnaMural in Silent Chat Channel Mode, in which you can change chat channel on which you can silently give commands.
x - Exits Resize Mode, or Text Color Change Mode, or Silent Chat Channel Select Mode.
ve - Puts the MagnaMural in Verbose Mode, which means the MagnaMural will copiously describe most everything it's doing. It's in Verbose Mode by default.
br - Puts the MagnaMural in Brief Mode, which means the MagnaMural will not spam you as much with descriptions of what it's doing. Particularly useful when you have multiple MagnaMurals around.
ph - Puts the MagnaMural in Phantom Mode, so you can walk through it.
so - Puts the MagnaMural in Solid Mode, so you can't walk through it.
hi - Puts the MagnaMural in Invisible Mode, which makes the MagnaMural completely transparent.
(If you forget where your transparent MagnaMural is, go to the View menu, and select Highlight Transparent - or, press Ctrl, Alt, and T on the keyboard all at the same time - and your invisible MagnaMural will be highlighted in red).
sh - Puts the MagnaMural in Visible Mode.
lo - Puts the MagnaMural in Locked Mode.
ul - Puts the MagnaMural in Unlocked Mode.
off - Makes the MagnaMural no longer listen for text chat and gesture commands.
Manual and Help-Related
COMMANDS, commands, co - Gives you the "*-Astroblahhh.Com MagnaMural Commands Summary - Public Domain" notecard.
HELP, help, h - Gives you the full manual in the form of a notecard. You can also browse the manual on the web - http://magnamural.astroblahhh.com/manual-pd.shtml
HOME PAGE, www - Go to the MagnaMural's home page at Astroblahhh.Com, http://magnamural.astroblahhh.com/
DONATE, donate, do - Go to a page of info about donating to me, Apollia Pirandello - http://astroblahhh.com/donations.shtml
Other
gest - Gives you a folder called "Astroblahhh.Com MagnaMural Gestures", containing the default gesture set, which uses silent chat channel 9.
DEMO, demo - Gives you a MagnaMural demo you can give away.
reset script - Resets the entire script. There is purposely no shortcut way to say this, because I think it should be hard to do unintentionally.
Longer Instructions on How To Do Various Things
Adding Textures
It's easy to add more textures. There are two main ways to do it. First, here's the shortcut method to copy textures into the MagnaMural. It should be possible to use this method even if you have a ton of textures in the MagnaMural.
Click the Inventory button at the lower right of your screen, and find the textures in your inventory that you want to add to the MagnaMural. Highlight the textures in your inventory (you can highlight more than one by pressing Shift as you highlight them).
Then, press and hold Ctrl on the keyboard, and drag the textures with the mouse onto Panel 2, making sure the cursor hasn't changed into one of those circles with a diagonal bar (like a No Parking sign) signifying that for some reason, Second Life won't let you drop items in there. Then, let go of the mouse button, and the textures should be added to the MagnaMural.
If the cursor did change into the circle with a diagonal bar, then, moving the Second Life camera around a bit might fix the problem. Or, it might not. Second Life, as you probably know, can be rather temperamental.
Second, here's the longer way. (However, if you have a ton of textures in the MagnaMural already, it may not be very convenient, because the Contents may take a long time to load, and until they do load, you won't be able to add more textures by this method):
Right-click on the MagnaMural and click Edit in the pie menu to bring up the standard Second Life object Edit window. Press the More >> button (if it's there). Click the Content tab. Press the Inventory button at the lower right of your screen, then find the textures in your inventory you want to add to the MagnaMural. Highlight the textures in your inventory, then drag them into the Contents folder in the Edit window.
The only problem is, Second Life, at least in my experience, is not totally reliable when it comes to copying inventory to various places. It can be quite laggy, and it might never copy your items at all. However, it may give you less trouble if you copy fewer textures at a time.
With both methods, if you have the optional floating text turned on, then, you will be able to see the total number of textures increase as the textures are added. If you know the exact number of textures you're adding, this will give you a good idea at a glance of whether your textures were successfully copied into the MagnaMural or not.
By the way, it won't break anything if you accidentally drop your textures on some other panel than Panel 2, but they won't be added to the MagnaMural's lineup of textures to display.
Backing Up and Duplicating Your MagnaMural
There are a number of ways to back up your MagnaMurals, which are all pretty easy. The easiest way is to just pick it up, by right-clicking it and choosing Take from the pie menu.
Or, if you don't want to pick it up, you can right-click it, and choose Take Copy from the pie menu. If you can't see Take Copy on the pie menu, press More > until you find it.
You might want to double-check that Second Life really did take a copy of it, because in my experience, Second Life can be rather unreliable. If you take a copy of it, if I'm not mistaken, the copy should end up in your Objects folder in your inventory.
You can duplicate a MagnaMural that is "rezzed" (created as an actual object) in the world by right-clicking it, choosing Edit from the pie menu, making sure the Position radio button (a round button which either is empty or is filled with a small dot) is filled, and then holding down Shift on the keyboard as you click and drag one of the arrows to position the MagnaMural.
Or, while you have a MagnaMural selected, you can go to Second Life's Edit menu and choose Duplicate, or simply press Ctrl and D on the keyboard at the same time.
You can also back up MagnaMurals which are still in your inventory, rather than "rezzed" (created as an actual object) in the world.
Click the Inventory button, then find the MagnaMural you want to duplicate in your inventory. Right-click on it and choose Copy from the little menu that comes up.
Then, right-click somewhere else in your inventory, and click Paste in the little menu that comes up. This should create a duplicate of the MagnaMural you copied.
Deleting Textures
To delete textures from the MagnaMural, there are two ways to do it. Saying tdel in text chat will delete the currently-displayed texture. That's the easiest way. The MagnaMural will ask you to say "y" to confirm you really want to delete that texture.
The other method is just the standard way to delete items from any object's contents. Right-click on the MagnaMural and select Edit from the pie menu. Then, in the standard Second Life object Edit window that appears, press the More >> button if it's visible. Then, click the Content tab.
If you have a lot of textures in the MagnaMural, the contents may take a long time to load, possibly an unbelievably long time. But, once (and if) they do, you can highlight and right-click on any you want to delete, and select Delete from the little menu that will pop up.
Second Life, as you probably well know, is glitchy and laggy, so even if it looks like the texture has been deleted (or hasn't been deleted), it might actually have been (or not have been). I don't know of any real solution to this - just keep trying. Perhaps going to an unlaggy sim might help.
Saying tdel is much faster and easier.
Just to be safe, I recommend making a backup of your MagnaMural before you delete anything from it.
Editing the MagnaMural's Prims
Since the MagnaMural's prims are modifiable, it's possible to edit the MagnaMural's prims to achieve a variety of interesting visual effects using the standard Second Life object Edit window controls. I recommend working on a backup copy of the MagnaMural, since some changes you can make via the Edit window aren't easily reversed.
Right-click on the MagnaMural and choose Edit from the pie menu. Then, if the More >> button is present, click it.
With the settings under the Textures tab, you could give the MagnaMuarl partial or complete transparency, metallic shininess, bumpiness, and turn off the Full Bright setting so local lighting and daylight will have an impact on how the picture looks.
And, to access the features under the Features tab, you can put a check in the "Edit linked parts" checkbox and select a prim. Then, you will be able to make the prim you're editing emanate light, or even make it a flexible (flexi) prim.
Getting a List of Textures
The MagnaMural can generate a numbered list for you in alphabetical order of all the textures it contains. You can easily copy and paste this list into a text editor on your computer (or in a Second Life notecard), and jot down your own notes on what the various textures look like. (If you're using a Windows computer, I highly recommend the free text editor NoteTab Light: http://notetab.com/ )
To generate such a list, just say list, or click the LIST button in the blue dialog pop-up (which will appear in the upper right of your screen when you click Panel 3, the lower left prim of the MagnaMural). After the list is output, open your chat history (such as by pressing Ctrl and H on the keyboard at the same time), and you can easily copy and paste the list from that window.
If you don't know the basics of copying and pasting text on your computer, you should definitely learn, because it's a skill that will serve you very well. This page should help: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial95.html
With the help of this list, you will be able to easily find any texture and go to it just by saying its number. (That is, as long as you haven't added more textures to the MagnaMural since you obtained the list, since adding new textures will probably change the order of the textures).
You can also search the list for any text by using your computer's text editor. If you're using NoteTab Light, just press Ctrl and F at the same time on the keyboard, which will summon the Find window. Type in the text you want to find, and click Find Next.
I'm not sure if there's any limit in Second Life to how long the list can be. I had the MagnaMural successfully print out a list of 3,722 textures - the only bad thing about it was it took many minutes to output this gigantic list. :-)
Hiding your MagnaMural and Making It Possible To Move Through It
This is great if you have a small piece of land, but don't feel like cleaning up every bit of junk you leave on it, but also don't want to bother the neighbors by leaving stuff out. You can easily hide the MagnaMural without un-rezzing it - just say hi, and that will put the MagnaMural into Invisible Mode. This doesn't automatically turn off the floating text, however - so, if you want it off, say hn to turn off the floating text.
(If you forget where your transparent MagnaMural is, go to the View menu, and select Highlight Transparent - or, press Ctrl, Alt, and T on the keyboard all at the same time - and your invisible MagnaMural will be highlighted in red).
To show the MagnaMural again, say sh.
And, if you want to make it so your MagnaMural won't be an obstacle to anyone walking or flying through, you can say ph to put it into Phantom Mode. This is also useful if you want to make the MagnaMural into a doorway of some kind, or something else you can walk through.
To make the MagnaMural solid again, you can say so to put the MagnaMural into Solid Mode.
The MagnaMural has a Locked Mode, where nothing happens if you press any of the panels other than Panel 3.
This will make it so once you have the MagnaMural set to an image you like, you can't so easily accidentally change it through stray clicks. If you do want to change the texture while it's in Locked Mode, though, you can still change it through gestures and text chat commands.
All Locked Mode does is make it so the MagnaMural doesn't pay any attention to clicks on the panels which navigate to other textures. It doesn't make it utterly impossible to change the texture, or to delete textures.
Locked Mode can be set by saying
To retrieve the single texture currently being displayed on the MagnaMural, either say
So, it's best to think of a very full MagnaMural as being a lot like a black hole - easy to put things into, but very difficult to get everything out again. If you have a MagnaMural with many hundreds or thousands of textures, it might be impossible to get them all out at once, though it should at least be possible to retrieve them one at a time.
So, don't make it so your only copy of your textures is in one chock-full MagnaMural - have other backups of your textures.
If you want to browse multiple textures at once, like a more standard texture browser, multiple MagnaMurals is how you can do it.
MagnaMurals are only 4 prims each, and you can easily duplicate the one you're looking at (and hence, all the textures it contains). The easiest way is to right-click on it, click Edit, then, as you click and drag one of the positioning arrows, hold
If you have all the MagnaMurals set to the same silent chat channel, then, while they're activated to listen for commands, they will all respond to your silent chat channel commands, menu commands, and gesture commands at the same time. (You can activate them by clicking anywhere on them).
You can also set them up to respond to different silent chat channels by saying
It might be a good idea to put your multiple MagnaMurals in Brief Mode (by saying
By the way, you shouldn't link multiple MagnaMurals together, because they'll won't work properly anymore if you do that. (By "link", I mean, don't use the "Link" feature which you can find in the Tools menu. It's perfectly fine for MagnaMurals to touch, or to intersect each other).
First, set out multiple MagnaMurals, and arrange them in whatever configuration pleases you. Then, right-click on any MagnaMural and choose Edit from the pie menu. As if you're going to link them, hold down the Shift key and click all of the other MagnaMurals you've set out. Then, right-click any of them and choose Take from the pie menu.
This will take all of them into inventory, and they will probably end up in your Objects folder. But, instead of them being taken individually and separately, they will be combined into one inventory listing - a "coalesced object", distinguishable in your inventory from a regular individual object by the fact that the icon for a coalesced object is a stack of cubes, rather than the one cube which is the icon for a regular, individual object.
When you rez the coalesced MagnaMurals, all of them will appear in the configuration you had them in when you took them into inventory!
For more info on coalesced objects, see this page from the official Second Life wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Inventory_Recovery_Steps#Did_the_objects_vanish_after_being_returned.3F
First, decide on a texture you want Second Life to replace with streaming video. If it's not already added to the MagnaMural, add it, and then put it on display.
Then, right-click your land, and click About Land in the pie menu. In the About Land window that will pop up, click the Media tab. Click on the box below the words "Replace this texture:", then pick a texture you would like to be used as your land's Media Texture.
Next, you'll need a streaming video URL of a QuickTime streaming video. Here's one - SciFiFree.Tv:
Add that (or another one like it) to the text box below the text "with content from this URL:".
Then, I suggest putting a check in the checkbox next to "Auto-scale content (slower and reduced visual quality", since otherwise, the streaming video won't fill the MagnaMural. Then, close the About Land window.
And, lastly, press the |> (play) button next to the eye icon that should have appeared toward the bottom of your screen. This should make the MagnaMural (and anything else which has your land's Media Texture on it) display streaming video.
I suggest using the QuickTime 500 kbps streams. Once you get to a web page with a video on it, you can find the URL of the stream by viewing the source code of the page in your web browser, and searching it for the text ".mov".
Panel 1, the upper right panel, is the one that listens. You need to be within 20 m of the MagnaMural for it to respond to your commands and gestures. This goes for blue dialog pop-up commands too.
If there's some reason you can't stand close to the MagnaMural, you can actually shout your commands, increasing the range at which the MagnaMural can hear you to 100 m. Mind your neighbors if you do that in regular, "audible" chat, since if anyone is close by, you might get on their nerves. Fortunately, you can actually shout commands on the silent chat channel.
Second Life being laggy, or text chat lag, can also interfere with the responsiveness of the MagnaMural. There's no solution to this, unfortunately.
Another text chat-related possible problem for which there is no solution is Second Life sometimes repeating the chat you say, which might make it so the same command is issued more than once.
You might be able to track down which it is (especially if it makes you perform an animation, which might give you a clue as to what the gesture is called) by going to your inventory, and typing "active" into the inventory search toward the top of the window, which will cause all your active chat gestures to be listed.
Anyhow, this may go away by itself, after you make your Second Life camera look elsewhere, but what will really help is the Reload command, which quickly goes forward one texture then backward one texture to where you started. You can issue the Reload command by saying
Go to Second Life's Edit menu and select Preferences - or simply press
Toward the bottom of the window will be a couple of checkboxes under the text "Offers of notecards, textures and landmarks". Uncheck "Automatically view after accepting." Then, press the OK button.
Right-click on Panel 4 (the lower right panel) and click Edit. Then, while holding down the
This will relink your MagnaMural, and it should function fine after that.
Once you make the MagnaMural display some other texture, whatever prims you linked to the MagnaMural will have all their texture(s) changed to whatever texture the MagnaMural is displaying. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, this might or might not be useful. It might be a good way of easily changing a lot of prims to all have the same texture on all sides.
When you link extra prims to the MagnaMural, just make sure that when you link everything together, you link the 4 panels last, in the order already described above - starting at Panel 4 and then clicking all the rest of the panels in clockwise order.
I recommend only doing this with a disposable backup copy of your MagnaMural, in case you can't figure out how to link the MagnaMural together again properly. And also disposable backup copies of whatever prims you're planning to link to the MagnaMural, since the original textures of those prims will be lost.
Locked Mode
lo, and unset by saying ul, and whatever the current setting is can be reversed by pressing the LOCK/UNLOCK button in the blue dialog pop-up.
Retrieving Textures
g in "audible" or silent text chat, or click Panel 3 (the lower left quadrant of the MagnaMural) and press GIVE TEXTURE in the blue dialog pop-up.
If you wish to retrieve every texture loaded into the MagnaMural (which are all stored in Panel 2, which is the root prim), right-click on the MagnaMural and press Open. Then, in the Object Contents window that pops up, press Copy to Inventory after the textures have loaded.
However, if you have a ton of textures in the MagnaMural, Second Life will probably be extremely slow to load all the textures, and, if you have a really huge number, Second Life might crash when you try to take them. That's what happened to me when I tried to take 3,722 textures at once out of a MagnaMural.
Setting Up Multiple MagnaMurals
Shift on the keyboard. A duplicate MagnaMural will appear.
ch, so you can optionally control them one at a time. And, if you ever do need to control them all at once, they will still all respond to audible chat commands.
br), so they won't all spam you as much with many messages all at the same time.
Here's how you can preserve the exact configuration of the multiple MagnaMurals you've set out.
Watching Streaming Video on Your MagnaMural
You can find other legal and public domain streaming videos here: http://www.americafree.tv/index.shtml
Solutions to Possible Problems
ul.
e, or pressing F5 (if you have your Reload gesture activated).
Ctrl and P on the keyboard at the same time. In the Preferences window that pops up, click the tab that says Popups.
Shift key on your keyboard, click Panel 3, Panel 1, and Panel 2, in that order - all the panels clockwise from Panel 4 - then press Ctrl and L on the keyboard at the same time. If this worked correctly, the outline of the prims will turn from yellow to blue (except for being yellow around Panel 2, the root prim).
Limitations of the MagnaMural
reset script.