secondlife / secondlife/viewer

Annoying 'invalid character' notification appears when typing unsupported character into various input fields

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bug stale
Dominant language
C++
Stars
299
Forks
146
Avg merge
1d 9h
Merged PRs (30d)
88

Description

Two new notifications have invaded the SL viewer for reasons that baffle me as they are distracting, unnecessary, disruptive of work flow, and potentially privacy-busting.

  1. The notification that you have typed an invalid character now pops up in the precious upper-right hand corner of the screen usually reserved for far more important notifications such as payments and announcements from the region owners or Lindens. It does not appear as a hover or toast or message at the workspace itself while editing. You can already tell you have an invalid character as you look at the object window or other type of editing window you are working with because your work STOPS. You already know it is invalid because your prompt STOPPED. You don't need your eye dragged up to the upper right-hand space for an invasive, duplicatory message.

  2. The notification that you have taken a screenshot that saved to your computer's inventory folders now also invades the upper right-hand corner. You already know that you took a screenshot because...you set up the location of where screenshots go when you selected the settings in Preferences. You do not need a distracting constantly repeating notice of this event happening each time when...you selected this option permanently -- and could change that location at will. The notice displays to the owner of the browser only, but if you copy room chat to make transcripts of office meetings, other various community and public resident meetings, you will see the notice then included -- outing the name you have used to label your system folders on your own computer, which might even be your full real name -- that you have to painstakingly edit out.

These are features no one among the general user base asked for to my knowledge. They have the feel of technologists' perfectionism in systems like CAPSLOCK notices which you already can see because you already have capital letters. The "invalid notifications" proposal was suggested here and simply immediately passed through without debate -- but does not have some mass community demand: https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/issues/961

(I will provide a screenshot of "invalid characters" when I can catch the next one)

If these intrusive notifications cannot simply be removed, then provide the user with the option to mute them in Preferences. Currently they DO NOT APPEAR in Preferences as an option to mute.

https://secondlife.canny.io/admin/feedback/bug-reports/p/enable-any-or-all-notifications-to-be-muted-in-preferences

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the invalid-character notification in an input field and the screenshot notification, then inspect the viewer's notification and Preferences flows. Compare their behavior with the existing notification controls. Done means the intrusive notices are removed or can be muted in Preferences without exposing local folder names in copied chat.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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