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Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

dino.im

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

#111

Post by julian-klode »

daryltucker wrote: post #38

Dino is slim and has some decent features, but Gajim is the client you want to be using today. Gajim has (although mostly broken) Voice and Video support as well as (working) plugin support and various plugins that you may expect. Dino really fell short for me in my needs for XMPP client, though I'm happy to see federated systems and their clients being promoted. Specifically Dino has issues with OMEMO support with C…

Gajim's an unstable mess that half of the time is not even connected to the server because it did not manage to reconnect after resume, or it just crashes.

It is fairly useless on dark theme, rendering grey on grey for the backlog.

Apart from a missing status notifier / appindicator, gajim is miles ahead.

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

#112

Post by julian-klode »

asnyder wrote: post #30
larma wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a section on motivation in the blog post (it literally has "Motivation" in the title): > A number of clients already exist for the XMPP protocol, however Dino sets a different focus. Existing clients target tech-savvy power users. The XMPP ecosystem lacks a client that is enjoyable to use while providing the features people expect from a modern chat application. Dino fills that gap by aiming to be secure and…

http://pidgin.im seems to be pretty easy. Doesn't require any tech-savvyness other than entering your credentials in a nice, intuitive interface, unless I'm missing something?

Pidgin works fine if you use one device. If you have multiple devices or want to receive messages while you're offline, it does not support that.

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

#113

Post by BlueTemplar »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #82
dependenttypes wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ide…

Also, IPSec.

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

#114

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

dwaite wrote: post #71
dragontamer wrote: post #69

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…

Group chats in XMPP (aka XEP-0045) is a pile of garbage, ill-conceived attempt to clone IRC to XMPP. It just can't properly work on mobile devices without a set of very ugly hacks to support it from breaking all the time. It should be just thrown away and replaced with a better solution (that's what we intend to do rather soon).

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

#115

Post by SamWhited »

jandrese wrote: post #22
SamWhited wrote: post #19

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…

It hasn't been this way for a while (since the early 2000s, I think), most things lookup DNS SRV records now, and before that most things provided a field to enter a different server address.

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

#116

Post by SamWhited »

ajconway wrote: post #96
mekster wrote: post #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…

Matrix seems to be the future now. The present is, however, Slack.

Matrix will likely never take off, sadly. I was hoping for an alternative for a while too, but not having a proper standards body to advocate for and push the standard probably means it's not displacing XMPP any time soon. Also the protocol just isn't great for chat; if you need a giant distributed graph database, great, but for chat it's just very heavy.

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

#117

Post by SamWhited »

kitd wrote: post #108
mekster wrote: post #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…

Someone recently pointed me at DeltaChat [1]. 'Chat' over SMTP/IMAP. Apart from voice/video, it ticks all of the above (plus other features such as threading and e2e security), with the fallback of being able to use a regular email client in an emergency [1] - https://delta.chat/en/

Does this have a standards body behind it advocating for and developing a spec that anyone can implement? I'd argue that this is a requirement for any communication system to take off and be useful and sustainable long term.

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

#118

Post by SamWhited »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #70
rakoo wrote: post #64

While I've been a believer of XMPP and still believes it has a place, I have to admit that it doesn't have the appeal it once has. Now the IM protocol du jour is Matrix, which might or might not know the same fate; who knows. And another one might come later, and there are already others today that exist and are widely used. I think it's high time we had a concerted effort to have one great UI (probably per platform)…

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 !)

I'm no fan of XML and think its use is one of XMPPs biggest flaws, but I wouldn't pick JSON over it… with XML at least you get a lot of the stateful encoding and namespacing (eg. extensions) right in your XML library of choice, with JSON you have to reinvent all of that which is more code, more spec, etc. I'm not really sure if there is a good alternative to XML, sadly :(

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

#119

Post by SamWhited »

paule89 wrote: post #98

Glad they do it right from the beginning. "Encryption, encryption, encryption Insert Balmer developer meme here " My question is what does matrix do better than xmpp. What does xmpp do better than matrix?

Matrix works well as a big distributed graph protocol, not so much for chat. XMPP works well for chat or anything where you need efficient near-realtime streams (eg. stock trading and tickers sometimes use XMPP, some accessibility caption systems, etc.). Also XMPP is better standardized (by virtue of having a long-term non-profit standards body, Matrix is sort of trying to do that, but also trying to figure out how to monetize it which is never a good recipe for long term success when your spec becomes part of your product).

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

#120

Post by bachmeier »

sascha_sl wrote: post #109
bachmeier wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The present is, however, Slack. Actually, in terms of number of users, the present is MS Teams. Both companies release their numbers and it's not even close.

Are these real active users, or just "so many accounts in the attched AD" though?

Not sure, but I really don't believe Slack's numbers either. I have a Slack account that only occasionally gets used, so they probably count me. Whatever the real numbers might be, Teams is very heavily used. My university has Office 365 and Teams comes with it for free. No need to pay for Slack. No need to expect others to use a new tool and a new app and a new login when Teams is right there.
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