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.

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

@fastfinge @jae

key exchange

It's Autocrypt, there's an RFC for it

Mime headers being encrypted? There's an RFC for it

The subject header being changed to [...] is a client / chatmail server implementation detail unnecessary

The Date header being smeared +- a few days is a client implementation detail too

None of that is required

All you needed to do to read the message in your email client is decrypt it. There are users reading messages in Thunderbird/Mutt/Proton Mail

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

@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.

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

@fastfinge @jae because deltachat-core is a nice implementation of the core protocols in a simple Rust package and presents a clean JSON-RPC API for you to build anything you want on top of it. And none of that has anything to do with accessibility anyway, that's all in the UI. So as long as you have a UI you can control, you're fine

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

@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.

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

@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.

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

@fastfinge @jae why aren't they options? You can write your own little core in C# with pgp/imap/smtp and do it yourself and have your own API forever if you really want

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

@feld @jae If someone cannot write a fully interoperable client, without examination of deltachat code, it's not an open standard. It's just a reference implementation.

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

@fastfinge @jae just want to be sure: have you ever seen this ? It was linked from the standards list

github.com/chatmail/core/blob/main/spec.md#chat-mail-specification

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

@feld @jae I did. But I submit that that's not enough for someone to go off and develop their own chatmail client, and then expect it to just work with deltachat. Whereas I can (and have) developed my own IRCV3 clients and had them "just work" without reference to anyone else's implementation, and am currently (though I'm using one of many libraries) developing a client that I can expect to "just work" on XMPP. For features I can't or don't want to implement, I can communicate to other servers and clients that users of my client don't have those features, I can know if another client supports a particular feature and give my user a friendly error if not, and I can do it all based on a normal looking jabber ID without requiring enormous web URLs that depend on the continued existence of deltachat's domains and servers. And my accessibility needs don't depend on the decisions and good intentions of some other organization.

Honestly, I like the idea of deltachat. I don't like the massive electron app, and I don't like being dependant on deltachat as an organization to do the right thing for accessibility. So I won't build any important workflows or relationships around it, or be part of any community that requires it.

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

@feld @jae Heck, just last week I contributed a pull request to this, as I was using and testing it to figure out what the ecosystem is like for third party clients and bots on deltachat: github.com/Simon-Laux/hermes-deltachat-platform/pull/2

ᴏᴏᴍ-ᴋɪʟʟᴇʀ: 333[𝟱𝟬𝗽𝘀𝗶 𝘁𝗼𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘁]™ @jae@bsd.cafe

@fastfinge @feld thanks for the pr on that repo, i pulled it in as well. @treefit and i are doing some interesting things with #hermes and #deltachat i've also started an xmpp integration, but i'm stuck on #omemo implementation which i always seem to trip up on that xep

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

@jae @feld @treefit I’ve done xmpp and Hermes’ already: github.com/fastfinge/hermes-xmpp-plugin

ᴏᴏᴍ-ᴋɪʟʟᴇʀ: 333[𝟱𝟬𝗽𝘀𝗶 𝘁𝗼𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘁]™ @jae@bsd.cafe

@fastfinge @feld @treefit just wired it up to both agents. works nicely. may have a pr for you with some ideas soon

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

@jae @feld @treefit I would love prs. Data forms interactions also need love. I don’t use those features myself so they’re not battle tested.

ArcaneChat @arcanechat@fosstodon.org

@fastfinge

without requiring enormous web URLs that depend on the continued existence of deltachat's domains and servers

this is actually a misconception, there is no need or dependency on any delta chat URL, the invite links i.delta.chat are just a nice clickable representation of the actual invite link that is a openpgp4fpr:... link and you can easily convert an i.delta.chat link into openpgp4fpr

@feld @jae