Note by @fastfinge

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

So because I have gone temporarily off my rocker, I'm working on an #xmpp client using #dotnet 10 and WPF, with artalk-xmpp for XMPP, libsignal for #OMEMO, and prism for screen reader output where needed. I'm only an evening into it, and I can already tell that OMEMO is going to be the source of complicated, inexplicable, and unreproducible bug reports for decades to come. It's still not as overcomplicated as #matrix, though.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

OMG what am I even doing This is a huge project it's going to need Jingle and that needs WebRTC and then file transfers and voice messages and oh also localization and sounds and hotkeys and settings and multi-account support and Oh God. even with AI this will take fifteen years why did I get out of bed today and choose this for myself

Only 3 Easy Payments of $19.95 @feld@friedcheese.us

@fastfinge there's always Delta Chat which solved almost all of these problems already :)

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@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.

Only 3 Easy Payments of $19.95 @feld@friedcheese.us

@fastfinge you're completely wrong we have third party clients and more coming all the time

github.com/trufae/parla

lambadalambda.github.io/estuary/

Unreleased tui client by @jae

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@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".

Only 3 Easy Payments of $19.95 @feld@friedcheese.us

@fastfinge @jae there is no "library" to write. It's PGP emails and SMTP/IMAP. Go ahead and do it yourself, there's nothing proprietary being implemented. It's just emails.

Name a feature that you think is some secret proprietary thing

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@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.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@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?

Only 3 Easy Payments of $19.95 @feld@friedcheese.us

@fastfinge @jae the main website says "built on internet standards" and links here:

github.com/chatmail/core/blob/main/standards.md

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@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?).

Only 3 Easy Payments of $19.95 @feld@friedcheese.us

@fastfinge @jae

the peer to peer apps are WebXDC, also a standard: webxdc.org

That's literally what the "web apps in chats" link on the main webpage goes to. It's not hidden. The p2p functionality is not special or hidden, it's just Iroh which is also documented on the webxdc site.

voice calls

it's just WebRTC, nothing special. You will need a STUN/TURN server most likely though. Chatmail relays provide one to clients with a password accessible under an IMAP METADATA command, otherwise you can point your client to any TURN server you want

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@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.