31–40 of 48 posts
The "bridges" really work well if you can host your own and "puppeteer" your account. I only use Element on my phone now and all whatsapp messages come through without issues. I am also spending some time hacking around some terminal matrix client. I don't have to worry about some corporation pulling the rug.
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…
Almost all communications suggest that you don't, including this message. For years, whenever I'd mention the UX issues I encountered I'd get responses along the lines of "yeah but we're working on XY which will be amazing". Ever since the Riot days the Element (web) client has barely improved its core UX (I'm excited for the 10 year anniversary of the multi-account issue).
> "Matrix sucks because not all clients have good UX"
You may have misunderstood; I'm saying "not a single client has good UX". This is a very personal thing of course, but for me it means that Matrix is barely usable (my favourites are Element X and Hydrogen, but neither is feature complete).
The Matrix 2.0 talk & accompanying efforts are very exciting to me, though. Element X is phenomenal (the first client I actually enjoy using) and the main thing that got me back into caring about Matrix.
The whole reason I'm back here complaining is that I have hope again that one day Matrix can be pleasant to use and I want to help making it happen. I want Matrix to be amazing so that I can tell people to use it without getting laughed at.
> It's probably fair to say that matrix-rust-sdk is the flagship now, not matrix-js-sdk.
I have heard about this (great technical choice, btw!) from side-channels like conference talks, but the official matrix website still shows it as one of multiple libraries in beta and the JS SDK as stable. Using it on the web seems unsupported (the WASM bindings are only for the crypto module). On a Matrix live episode I had (I think) heard hints at the JS SDK eventually becoming a front for the Rust one, so I figured I'd go with that.
Well, as a sibling comment points out, the documentation page very prominently states that it shouldn't be used. And where does the link to the updated documentation go? Of course, a tutorial for registering a Matrix account.
The reason I'm (hopefully productively!) complaining is that I'm emotionally invested again. I want Matrix to be good and I'd like to somehow help making it happen. For now this probably means getting together with interested people at Camp.
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 al…
Are you really going to encrypt alerts your servers are sending you with GPG?
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 c…
Also, Matrix Client-Server API is just HTTP calls, it isn't really that hard.
But using the SDK gives you things like encryption and other features.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 al…
The need is convenience, of course. Are you really going to encrypt alerts your servers are sending you with GPG?
Other common and non-sensitive notifications (like "Hey there's an SSH login on this machine!") I don't encrypt since I see no reason to having them encrypted in the first place.
The "bridges" really work well if you can host your own and "puppeteer" your account. I only use Element on my phone now and all whatsapp messages come through without issues. I am also spending some time hacking around some terminal matrix client. I don't have to worry about some corporation pulling the rug.
Does that mean I could set a bot to login to my account and post as me, all from the comfort of an IRC client? Any more deets?
The matrix TUI client I am using is iamb[1]. It's still early WIP, but usable.
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…
> No need; we have the message loud and clear... :| Almost all communications suggest that you don't, including this message. For years, whenever I'd mention the UX issues I encountered I'd get responses along the lines of "yeah but we're working on XY which will be amazing". Ever since the Riot days the Element (web) client has barely improved its core UX (I'm excited for the 10 year anniversary of the multi-account…
To play Devil's advocate, the documentation for the JS SDK was exponentially worse quite a while back. So much so that, in some cases, you'd have to view the actual implementation code to understand how to use it.
This was made even worse by incomplete TSDoc which didn't cover the entire API surface, meaning using the SDK in TypeScript was a matter of casting the client to `any`, checking the implementation to see what a certain method required, understanding how the method worked with no documentation whatsoever, and using it without any editor suggestions etc. to help you. (yep, long sentence)
Not sure if it's still as bad but wow, that was one of the worst JS libs I've come across in a while. Despite its shortcomings as a platform, the Discord ones were a lot more comfortable to use (Eris, Discord.js), as they had actual documentation.
I'll finish up by saying I hope they've learned that developer experience is very important for such a platform. Look at Discord; bots were one of the things that put them where they are today. Being able to programmatically integrate into a platform is crucial to its success as, without it, you have something nobody knows how to actually use and integrate with.
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 c…
For me, IRC just doesn’t work. I can’t receive messages when I’m offline. I can’t read what other wrote while i was offline. These for me are just plain red flags.
I also can’t search if somebody else asked the same question before.
There is no good mobile (iOS) app. I tried Palaver, it’s ok but every other chat app is much better.
Lastly, IRC is really hard to set up and log into. And I would call myself pretty tech savvy. This just eliminates it from ever becoming mainstream.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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_.
The point I was making earlier that I am not in a huge rush to talk to someone who is focused on enumerating a whole bunch of complaints at me, issues which I am PAINFULLY aware of already. Managing a FOSS project is miserable at the best of times, and I'd rather focus on fixing the issues (e.g. solving UX hell by shipping Element X) than being berated about how shit we are and how much better we could be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…