[Opensim-dev] Proposal: Introduce key:value pair dictionaries into SOP and PrimitiveBaseShape

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Hi there.  Whilst implementing media-on-a-prim, I've been keeping as much code in the MOAP region module as possible.

I'm quite impressed with how feasible this is.  However, there remain three major structures where the core of OpenSim 
has to understand something about media on a prim.

1)  Database plugins - to get/put values to named database columns (e.g. prims.MediaURL).
2)  Script functions (e.g. llGetPrimMediaParams()).
3)  Scene objects (PrimitiveBaseShape.Media and SceneObjectPart.MediaURL).

It's difficult to do anything right now about (1) and (2), but I believe there is an opportunity to address (3).

What I would like to do is introduce dictionaries into PrimitiveBaseShape and SceneObjectPart that would supplement 
existing fields by storing arbitrary key/value pairs.  So instead of having to hardcode a new MediaURL property on 
SceneObjectPart I could instead get/put the data as something like SceneObjectPart.Values["MediaURL"].

Thus, the dictionaries can act as blackboards for communication between plugins and modules without the core of OpenSim 
having to get involved.  I think that this would move us a tiny way towards our vision of being a generic virtual 
environment platform and away from hardcoded Second Life specifics, and make it easier to write more ambitious region 
modules without additions to core.

Thoughts?

-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org
http://twitter.com/justincc