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Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

dino.im

81–90 of 153 posts

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#81
It's sad that we don't have a very good self hosted chat solution.

Last time I checked around, XMPP didn't have a client that I could recommend to business clients that looked easy/simple to use, has no gotchas and looks native.

Currently I use Mattermost, which does basic things fine and things are stable but the formatting is just getting in the way making texts unnecessary big and bold when people never intend to (there is a per user setting to disable formatting but I can't tell everyone to turn it off), and reply and quoting interface is just wrong and I never use it, so most of the other people use another vendor service which is easy and does things in a saner way.

And video/voice is apparently not in their integrated goal and is thrown to some external paid service, so pretty much only simple text and file uploads.

I'm not looking for anything too special in my opinion but I find it there's no self hosted solution that has,

- Simple interface so I don't have to lecture people 10 minutes on how to use it.

- WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc

- File uploads

- Decent reply/quote feature

- Multiple people voice call

- Optionally multiple people video calls

- Native clients for desktop and clients and web Interface

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's worrying that Matrix uses the layer 7 HTTP (does it make it "layer 8"?) compared to XMPP's potentially more efficient use of layer 4 TCP, it's still better than the closed alternatives... (And JSON > XML !)

It is actually a good idea to use https rather than your own protocol because then your network provider/government will not be able to (easily) find out that you aren't just making https requests using your browser. Useful for people living in oppressive governments as well as employees/students under restrictive firewalls. In addition to that this will get more efficient once we have http over quic.

Quic seems to be the UDP equivalent to TCPcrypt? Both of which should be used by default on the Internet? But why should in your examples "the authorities" care or not whether you are using a browser over HTTP(S) or any other kind of software/protocol? If any communication channel is available, it's possible to send any kind of VPN traffic through it. Bits are bits. Especially when encrypted, so the censor has no idea as to what is inside...

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's worrying that Matrix uses the layer 7 HTTP (does it make it "layer 8"?) compared to XMPP's potentially more efficient use of layer 4 TCP, it's still better than the closed alternatives... (And JSON > XML !)

It is actually a good idea to use https rather than your own protocol because then your network provider/government will not be able to (easily) find out that you aren't just making https requests using your browser. Useful for people living in oppressive governments as well as employees/students under restrictive firewalls. In addition to that this will get more efficient once we have http over quic.

Bear in mind that when students and employees are on their school/work network, they often have to accept the network admin's certificate authority in order to be allowed to connect to the network. So effectively, the network admin can spoof SSL certificates and MITM traffic, even if it's encrypted.

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#84
post #60

Man, I need an XMPP client that does what slack does: group chats with the chat topics organized on the left side along with message history and status notifications.

I heard kaiwa ( http://getkaiwa.com/ ) is good, and it has this now standard Slack-like UI. Never used it though so I can't personally vouch for it.

I've seen that but development seem to have died for a 5 years ago unfortunately :/ it looked very promising

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a server design problem, not a client problem. XMPP is stateful, so it is harder to have a distributed server but it's also doing something more complicated than eg. serving a document like HTTP. If you use a server like ejabberd and a proxy layer you can easily do geographic distribution of the server, or at least, with no more difficulty than any other protocol.

It bled over into clients too. You would tell your client to connect to "google.com" and it was hardcoded to connect to "xmpp.google.com", with no option to choose a different server. If you had multiple domains that you wanted to connect the servers would also default to xmpp.other.domain. If you wanted to connect to test.my.domain to test2.my.domain you were SOL. In a lab environment you could hack it with local DN…

That was not the case since at least 15 years ago; that's when I setup a couple of jabber servers on subdomains. None of them had xmpp in their DNS name.

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#87
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the focus of XMPP puts the effort in the wrong place. FreeNode IRC is still used because community effort to maintain the channels. Similarly, subreddits live or die by community moderation. An effort that simplifies channel maintenance, like how easy it is to open a new Subreddit (the #1 portal, a static website URL representing your community identity) is the most important step forward. Once you establ…

I agree, somewhat. XMPP was primarily about person-to-person communication, with group channels being a separate add-on. Part of iMessage's popularity is the ability to have group conversations the same way as those person to person communications - to the point where SMS users may get excluded from conversations. IRC is just a terrible architecture which is exposed in its protocol, but it will survive a long time be…

> IRC is just terrible architecture

IRC is for public channels (and supports direct messages). It’s far from perfect, but I wouldn’t call it terrible; it works very well for its original purpose (and has been for almost 3 decades now).

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's worrying that Matrix uses the layer 7 HTTP (does it make it "layer 8"?) compared to XMPP's potentially more efficient use of layer 4 TCP, it's still better than the closed alternatives... (And JSON > XML !)

It is actually a good idea to use https rather than your own protocol because then your network provider/government will not be able to (easily) find out that you aren't just making https requests using your browser. Useful for people living in oppressive governments as well as employees/students under restrictive firewalls. In addition to that this will get more efficient once we have http over quic.

You can also do XMPP over HTTP (long-polling aka bosh, or websockets). If people really want to add a layer, it is doable :)

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#89

Used to communicate with a bunch of friends via AIM, then Google Talk (XMPP), then Yahoo IM... we gave up after the last one shutdown. What's the goto XMPP service these days?

If you don't want to self host I'd recommend https://account.conversations.im/ it's paid but properly maintained to have all extensions for modern experience. If you don't want to pay just pick something with good grades from https://compliance.conversations.im/old/

Re: Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

#90

What is "JID" and how can I get one?

“JID” is short for “Jabber ID” (jabber being the original name for the protocol), and is for XMPP what an email address is for SMTP.

JIDs look like email addresses.

Unless you want to run your own XMPP server, you can register a JID at one of the public XMPP servers: https://list.jabber.at/

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