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A Quick Overview of Matrix

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Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#21

Post by gtvwill »

solarkraft wrote: post #3

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…

Man it's the worst to get into. I've been reading about it for at least a few years now and Ive wanted in, have tried to get in a few times...but where the hell are the simple tutes to do so? Where's the paid youtubers holding my hand through this? Don't get me wrong I want decentralised self controlled Comms. But I don't want another degree to set it up or manage it or get my friends hosting it, I already did that for mikrotik n routing.

Matrix has been a train wreck of a protocol deployment from a pleb consumer pov.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#22

Post by gtvwill »

Arathorn wrote: post #11
preya2k wrote: 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...)

Why not? One nasty class of bugs can make any project entirely unusable. In business it's all it takes to make me use your competitor over you.

As a dev you need to not fall into the trap of lumping users problems and faults off onto your own scale of what is or isn't important. This will ruin your business. You as the dev/on the inner circle have bias to what you think is or isn't important. If you disregard something as small but your users are like yea it's small but it's a major problem that makes the platform unusable your gonna drop users quicker than you can blink all the while asking yourself why?

Dangerous position, be wary of judging your clients problems importance on your own scale. Matrix will fail with that attitude. You won't focus on what your consumers want.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#23

Post by justaj »

aaviator42 wrote: post #13

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

This is almost completely broken on non-GCF (Google Services) phones. I've seen message notifications arriving 12 hours (!!!) later.

For those users it's recommended to use Matrix clients alongside something like https://ntfy.sh/ , which sends push messages to your phone. However, one could then also ask: What is the need for Matrix in that case? I suppose end-to-end encryption would be one argument, but you could also encrypt message (contents) client side with something like GPG. So, I'm left wondering what really is the benefit of Matrix for those users.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#24

Post by 3np »

Arathorn wrote: post #10
abstractbeliefs wrote: post #9

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…

Oh, I wasn't aware the bridge was actively maintained... Any hope to ever have things like this properly considered?

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/146...

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/137...

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/146...

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#25

Post by Arathorn »

gtvwill wrote: post #22
Arathorn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Why not? One nasty class of bugs can make any project entirely unusable. In business it's all it takes to make me use your competitor over you. As a dev you need to not fall into the trap of lumping users problems and faults off onto your own scale of what is or isn't important. This will ruin your business. You as the dev/on the inner circle have bias to what you think is or isn't important. If you disregard somethi…

As I said, we're close to nailing the problem, and the element web team has literally been working on nothing else for weeks.

I have no clue why you think we're disregarding it; it drives me nuts too.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#27

Post by 3np »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #20
3np wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have a few pending already (some for a couple of years since last follow-up) and Arathorn saying "don't come talk to us about it" doesn't inspire confidence _at all_.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#28

Post by palata »

rwxer wrote: post #4

One of the really nice features of Matrix is the IRC bridge to Libera Chat. Libera Chat is the current home of open source projects' community and support channels. Earlier it was necessary to set up an IRC bouncer if you needed a persistent connection to the IRC server. But now you can just create an account on Matrix and join a Libera IRC channel from Matrix. The Matrix bridge functions like an IRC gateway on Matri…

Sounds like an overkill bouncer. I use the one of SourceHut, it just works.

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#29

Post by palata »

I used IRC for 15 years, and then was quite into Matrix (and their bridging) for a while. I used Matrix for 2 years, until I realised that almost all of the channels I used were on IRC.

Moving back to IRC, I realised how heavy Matrix seems to be.

I understand IRC is very old and lacking a few features, but Matrix seems like a completely overkill solution. It seems so complex that the only way to write a third-party client is by using the official libs, and even that seems so hard that they keep suggesting that Element is the only good alternative (while acknowledging that it still has pretty big UX issues, after all those years).

Also I remember reading from one of the leads that performance was not their main concern. They would rather work on academic features than make sure the protocol is very efficient. That's a problem for me.

At this point I am not sure if Matrix can succeed...

Re: A Quick Overview of Matrix

#30

Post by tentacleuno »

Arathorn wrote: post #12
solarkraft wrote: post #3

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…

The 2nd link you posted has a large red disclaimer stating the documentation is outdated. Does this mean it shouldn't be used ...? If so, why did you link it here?
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