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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
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completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
xmpp fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae Because the only way to find out all the implementation decisions deltachat has made is to examine the code. They're "based on" the standards they list, not compliant with them. If I write a core just with those standards as written, It's not going to work correctly with the deltachat app.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae I'm glad you know this stuff. Wake me up when there are multiple independent chatmail implementations that I can pick from, and what I decide to use is completely transparent to the people I'm chatting with. Until then I'm just not interested in getting my friends and lovers to switch to something that could be ripped away from me at any second, because deltachat decided it didn't want to do an RPC API anymore, and everyone should just shut up and use their client.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae If I don't like the c# library I'm using to build XMPP, I can rip it out and pick another one. There are like 6 to choose from. If they disable an API I needed, I can build it myself, or use a different library. Those are not options with deltachat.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae That's what we thought with Twitter and Reddit. Then they discontinued the API's. Those are just two recent examples of something that has happened dozens of times in the last 25 years. Slack discontinuing IRC is another. If I depend on an API that could be taken away at any moment, I have nothing. If there are no competing and interoperable implementations of the standard, you're just at the whims of the owner of the one true version.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae And there's not even any mention of the weird peer to peer app package stuff they do. If I want to fully interoperate with deltachat, it seems like I need that for stuff like voice calls and other future Realtime things (typing indicators?).
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae And that document is either out of date or false. Deltachat's misuse of subject lines, date smearing, etc, are absolutely in violation of the RFCs. Notice they never claim they follow or comply with the standards. They're just "based on them". Just following those standards will not result in a client that in any way can be used seamlessly with other deltachat users, or is guaranteed to interoperate with them.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae Interesting that everyone uses libdeltachat or deltaachat-core, then. There is no ecosystem of standards compliant implimentations. And seemingly no clear idea what that would even mean to deltachat.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae Or if it is, it's not developer friendly at all. For XMPP, I can look at the list of xeps to know exactly what my client needs to implement to achieve various levels of compatibility with the standard: xmpp.org/extensions/

Same for IRCV3, the list of rfcs and extensions is all right there: ircv3.net/irc/

I have no idea where any of this info lives for deltachat. The website and github don't make it obvious. What parts of email do I need? What parts of PGP do I need? I guess I need to do autocrypt based on your message. But what is the name of the standard that deltachat is even targeting? Chatmail, I guess? What do I need to have to be a "chatmail compatible client"? Are there test suites I should pass?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae It's not, though. Deltachat does weird shit with email headers to anonymize everything. I couldn't just read a message from deltachat in my regular email client. And I have no idea how they're doing federation and key exchange and things. But it's all based on weird links that require deltachat's domains and servers to exist and be running. I can't just type an email in the chat client and send a deltachat message.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae If I would like to propose a change to the standard, the only way I see to do it would be submitting a PR to libdeltachat. There doesn't seem to be any standards process outside of that. That is not an open, standards-based protocol. That's just "using someone's thing and building on it".
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld @jae Nope. These are just running deltachat-core or libdeltachat, from what I can tell. If I want a library in C#, there is none. If I want to write my own library in C#, without depending on deltachat-core, I can't. There's no list of RFCs I can look at, nothing like xeps or IRCV3 caps, etc. It's just "use our library".
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Monal @miki @plzupgrademe If you want to be both cross platform and accessible, WX is literally your only practical option. QT5 has come a long way, but there are still lots and lots of issues you’d have to work around. GTK is right out.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Monal @miki @plzupgrademe Because gtk remains an accessibility disaster. We would need to spend years on gtk just to get gajim usable on windows.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld I dropped Jami and signal from my life for the same reason. “Just use the official clients” is not an open protocol. Not even if the client and server are open source.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@feld But it’s an electron app. With no open standards process to develop a third party implementation. So if deltachat decides to stop caring about accessibility some day, I’m screwed. They control the protocol from end to end. If it’s not an open standard I’m not interested. I’ve been betrayed by too many organizations at this point. Especially nonprofit open source ones.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@ppatel Interesting. I don’t let AI run unattended. I know exactly what I want built and how. So I have to stear every step.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@ppatel Hell, just getting an e2e test harness set up took me two hours this morning: automating a local ijabberd deploy with docker and wsl. There’s no simpler way to handle that.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@ppatel I’m between jobs at the moment. I’m using this project to upskill and for resume juice. There are 37 xeps and 4 rfcs I need to support. Getting xmpp to done is a year of full time work for a single developer, even with AI.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@ppatel But I expect each version to be about a year of work.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@ppatel Hah. I put matrix on the roadmap for v3, after xmpp in v1 and irc in v2. Then plugins are v4.
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