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A Quick Overview of Matrix

juliette.page

11–20 of 48 posts

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#11
post #5

I'm beginning to doubt whether Matrix can actually succeed. It's a great idea, and there are great people involved, but there's just so many different problems/features that it's still lacking. And the progress is painstakingly slow. I really want them to succeed and I still try to get everyone on board and evangelize all my clients to join Matrix – but the truth is, I'm loosing hope. Example: About a year ago, "Thre…

Agreed that the stuck notification problems with threads is a real embarrassment. However, I wouldn't give up on the whole project over one nasty class of bugs (which i am very hopeful we're close to nailing...)

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#12

Does anyone else find it funny that the flagship SDK (JS) is largely undocumented? And that the UX of all clients in existence leaves a lot to be desired (yes, Element X is the best one but it lacks features for now)? Matrix is annoyingly hard to get into, IMO. It has gotten better in the last years, but it isn't exactly good yet. It hurts because I want it to be good so that everyone can switch. I plan to talk about…

It's probably fair to say that matrix-rust-sdk is the flagship now, not matrix-js-sdk. Yes, js-sdk's doc isn't exhaustive, but http://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-js-sdk/stable/ and guides like https://matrix.org/docs/legacy/usage-of-the-matrix-js-sdk/ tend to be pretty good.

In terms of "Matrix sucks because not all clients have good UX" - you could say the same about the Web. Meanwhile Element X kicks ass, and is rapidly coming up to feature parity - to the extent that we're going to soft-launch it on the App Store tomorrow.

> I plan to talk about this with the Element developers at CCCamp.

No need; we have the message loud and clear... :|

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#14

Does anyone else find it funny that the flagship SDK (JS) is largely undocumented? And that the UX of all clients in existence leaves a lot to be desired (yes, Element X is the best one but it lacks features for now)? Matrix is annoyingly hard to get into, IMO. It has gotten better in the last years, but it isn't exactly good yet. It hurts because I want it to be good so that everyone can switch. I plan to talk about…

It's probably fair to say that matrix-rust-sdk is the flagship now, not matrix-js-sdk. Yes, js-sdk's doc isn't exhaustive, but http://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-js-sdk/stable/ and guides like https://matrix.org/docs/legacy/usage-of-the-matrix-js-sdk/ tend to be pretty good. In terms of "Matrix sucks because not all clients have good UX" - you could say the same about the Web. Meanwhile Element X kicks ass, and is ra…

This comment could be read as "Element X solves the major UX issues and we're on top of things", in which case no, the message did not get through.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#15

All my server back-ends send me alerts and logs via matrix, which I can check easily from any device, including my phone :) https://github.com/aaviator42/MatrixTexter

I'm like you @aaviator42! :-)

I've been using matrix for chat since it first came out...and then stumbled upon using it as my system notifications tool...it was one of those "duh!" use-case moments for me. So by using matrix, there's one less app/client i have to use for notifications; all human-to-human chats go into relevant rooms, and system notifications go into dedicated "notifications" room(s). Matrix is truly so versatile!

Now that i see that yours uses PHP, i can share with friends and colleagues who have the same idea as you and I, but prefer leveraging PHP on their infrastructure. My code happens to use python [0]...but the beauty of all of this is that - with open source - users get to choose their preference! Kudos to you!

[0] = https://github.com/mxuribe/howler

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I think Matrix's bridge onto Libera might soon be curtailed - they've not been good neighbors for some time and it's eroding the usability of IRC for IRC natives. https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates

On the Matrix side, we've put a lot of effort into being good neighbours, fwiw - e.g. recently this massive refactor at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/166... to allow the matrix irc bridge to be restarted without reconnecting all its IRC users (the single biggest complaint we ever had about the bridge in terms of eroding usability of IRC for IRC natives). Sadly it looks like it wasn't consid…

I'm not sure how many years you have been bridging in but with recent developments like Matrix logging all chats (including a second bot after the first one was banned) it sounds like too little too late.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#17
post #15

All my server back-ends send me alerts and logs via matrix, which I can check easily from any device, including my phone :) https://github.com/aaviator42/MatrixTexter

I'm like you @aaviator42! :-) I've been using matrix for chat since it first came out...and then stumbled upon using it as my system notifications tool...it was one of those "duh!" use-case moments for me. So by using matrix, there's one less app/client i have to use for notifications; all human-to-human chats go into relevant rooms, and system notifications go into dedicated "notifications" room(s). Matrix is truly…

Hi! Nice to meet my counterpart from another universe! So many similarities between our READMEs! :)

I agree, FOSS is such a beautiful concept, that allows us to do cool stuff like this. :D

Kudos to you as well!

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like you @aaviator42! :-) I've been using matrix for chat since it first came out...and then stumbled upon using it as my system notifications tool...it was one of those "duh!" use-case moments for me. So by using matrix, there's one less app/client i have to use for notifications; all human-to-human chats go into relevant rooms, and system notifications go into dedicated "notifications" room(s). Matrix is truly…

Hi! Nice to meet my counterpart from another universe! So many similarities between our READMEs! :) I agree, FOSS is such a beautiful concept, that allows us to do cool stuff like this. :D Kudos to you as well!

Likewise on all points!! :-D

Also, i hope you don't mind, i was so impressed with your app, that i am now pointing to it from my repo: https://github.com/mxuribe/howler#q-im-not-a-fan-of-python-a...

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Matrix side, we've put a lot of effort into being good neighbours, fwiw - e.g. recently this massive refactor at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/166... to allow the matrix irc bridge to be restarted without reconnecting all its IRC users (the single biggest complaint we ever had about the bridge in terms of eroding usability of IRC for IRC natives). Sadly it looks like it wasn't consid…

I'm not sure how many years you have been bridging in but with recent developments like Matrix logging all chats (including a second bot after the first one was banned) it sounds like too little too late.

Matrix does not "log all chats". There were some IRC channels which had been explicitly configured by their chanops in the past to be "world readable" in Matrix parlance (i.e. opting into being publicly viewable), which meant that they showed up on archive.matrix.org.

It seems this caused concern because archive.matrix.org didn't have UI to explain why a given channel was visible (i.e. "chanop Bob explicitly set this channel to be world-readable on the Matrix bridge on Jan 1 2017") - and so after we got complaints from ircops last weekend we immediately took the service down to double-check and add the UI to spell out what's going on (and give the IRC channels & networks in question a chance to mark themselves as non-world-readable if that's what they want).

As I said, we're trying to be good neighbours, but there's a lot of ill will flying around.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#20
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably fair to say that matrix-rust-sdk is the flagship now, not matrix-js-sdk. Yes, js-sdk's doc isn't exhaustive, but http://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-js-sdk/stable/ and guides like https://matrix.org/docs/legacy/usage-of-the-matrix-js-sdk/ tend to be pretty good. In terms of "Matrix sucks because not all clients have good UX" - you could say the same about the Web. Meanwhile Element X kicks ass, and is ra…

This comment could be read as "Element X solves the major UX issues and we're on top of things", in which case no, the message did not get through.

Pull requests welcome.
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