[Black Tulip] Presenter

When you're giving classes or presentations in an environment like Second Life, apart from typing the text that is the “content” of your presentation, you also need to pay attention to questions being asked in local chat, plus the work your students may be doing in-world and also, possibly, some private messages with more questions or comments. If you have your notes already prepared, something that allows you to output your presentation text from a notecard to local chat helps you to focus on your audience’s needs.

I began developing this tool as a simple notecard-echo tool. Then I thought, "Why not add chat modes, so I can select if the lines will be Whispered, Said, Shouted, Owner Said, or just displayed to me?" And so I added these features. After that, I realized that it could be more convenient if I added multi-notecard support. Then I developed a simple image projector/viewer, separate from the note reader, so that I could display diagrams and other images in my classes. In the end, I put this all together in a single tool, and added a few more features. The end product is what you have in this tool.

Animated textures to display, sound, particles, multiple displays, long paragraphs, multiple notecard support, dynamic pointer and much more.

The complete feature listing follows:

NOTE CARD READER:
- Copies lines of text (i.e. presentation content) from notecards to open chat
- HUD incorporates three display panes:
o “Just Sent” pane shows text most recently said to your audience
o “Next to be Sent” pane shows text about to be said
o “Preview” pane allows you to view any part of your presentation in advance
- Dynamically inserts “ad hoc” comments into the output stream (e.g. answer questions on the fly)
- Text can be Whispered (10m range), Said (20m range) or Shouted (100m range)
- Output can be silenced, so unwanted lines from the notecard can be skipped (suppressed from the output)
- Output can be sent to just the Owner, appearing in the Owner’s chat window
- Supports comment lines that won’t be read to your audience
- Outputs long paragraphs of text, up to 1024 characters (not the typical 255 character limit of other tools)
- Dynamically loads multiple notecards
- Special feature to output properly formatted LSL script code blocks

SLIDE PROJECTOR / VIEWER:
- Rezzable, resizable Image Display Screen provided
- Displays your diagrams, photos, or any other graphics for viewing by your students.
- Easily integrates the display of images into the flow of your presentation
- Displays a visible pointer by simply clicking on the screen
- Multiple Image Display Screens can be rezzed, and different images sent to each
- Choose from a variety of transition effects between images
- Dynamically adjusts aspect ratio for each image
- Supports animated textures
- Optionally generates a variety of particle effects when an image is displayed
- Optionally plays a sound file when an image is displayed

OBJECT REZZER:
- Objects from your inventory can be rezzed in a position relative to your Avatar (range 10m)
- Easily integrates the rezzing of objects into the flow of your presentation
- Objects can be rezzed in any rotation desired

CONTROL HUD:
- Reads the next line from the notecard into chat, or...
- Go back one or more lines to repeat some material
- Skip back to the beginning of the notecard
- Allows presenter to preview the lines of material independently of sending the lines to chat
- Line counters show sequence numbers of line just read and line being previewed
- Click the HUD to make it transparent
- Minimize the HUD to get it out of the way temporarily