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Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

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381–390 of 624 posts

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how does it sanely pronounce things with abbreviations or even something like: NSDictionary *myCompoundedWord = @{@“key: [NSNumber numberWithInt: 7] }; And know that it’s missing the terminal “ in the string and has an extra space after the ]? Seems very difficult. Would be great if it could understand the language enough to verbalize it at a higher level.

With the punctuation level set to all, the NVDA screen reader for Windows reads your code snippet like this: n s dictionary star my compounded word equals at left brace at left quote key colon [pause] left bracket n s number number with int colon [pause] 7 right brace right bracket semi It's a lot to absorb, but people do program productively this way. For example, the NVDA screen reader is itself developed primarily…

Interesting, how do blind developers feel about minimalist languages like lisp? On one hand it seems like it would read very well in some circumstances (+ 1 2), but the scoping could be a real pain. Cobol seems like another language that might be well suited to them.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#382
post #216

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

Why don't you evolve slack into open protocols? Oh that's right, that's your IP. That is the reason you walk away from protocols and implement 'safer', 'reliable', 'augmented' closed source options.. Your time could be spent on open source, so don't claim that open source walked away from you, when you're the one doing it.

I don't think the person you're responding to is the one doing it.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#383
post #362
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is amazing, there really isn't a good replacement right now. Before that it was a mess/mix of IRC/Skype/Teamspeak/Whatsapp, now you can combine all that in one great client from a company that actually seems to care about its users. It's my favorite monthly Paypal charge!

When I combine the feature set of IRC/Skype/Teamspeak/WhatsApp, I come up with text chat + voice/video conferencing, which e.g. Skype already provides. Is the difference that the client is great?

Ever try to get Skype for business (née lync) working on Linux? With video/voice?

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#384
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extension availability/usage will cluster around the tent-pole implementations. A really popular mobile Jabber client will suddenly have the extensions it supports become popular with everyone else. Conversations looks nice. As for why some set of extensions hasn't been brought up to modernity, that answer's simple: nobody cares about xmpp enough. Maybe just some users, but fuck those guys, they don't build anything.

>> A really popular mobile Jabber client will > Will Man, xmpp has been out for twenty years now.

Irony here is that WhatsApp, Google and Facebook all had xmpp working (in their own silos) for mobile. WhatsApp still do.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#385
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, makes me so happy to see the accessibility concerns at the top of this thread. I hate Slack so much. Nothing has made me say "is 10 AM too early for a beer?" quite so much as that absolute pile of uselessness. I thought they'd actually improved their accessibility story when my screen reader read various elements as buttons. Later I discovered that, while they'd likely added the correct ARIA role to a , they…

As a developer who should probably pay more attention to this than I do, can you recommend some reading material about how to make an app accessible, and how to make sure it stays accessible (i.e. is there a good way to CI test this?).

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#386
I just recently started using slack and that's because a) of the irc gateway, b) people expressed interest in me connecting to a few "rooms" (I don't even know the slack terminology for room). Yes it's always peer pressure from the ones that know "better". It's sad that I 'll have to disconnect from those rooms and it's even sadder that I did not stand my ground but rather gave in and connected to slack. At least I 'll have the consolation I was right I the first place. Bye slack. You will NOT be sorely missed.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe so. emacs-slack uses their official OAuth2 + Websocket integration https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack#how-to-get-token-the-...

This is, incidentally, an argument about how a well-designed system like emacs can make writing a truly-native app easy : so easy that some random guy was able to take the API and write a client for a text editor (granted, the greatest & best text editor the world has ever known …). If it's so hard to write native macOS, Windows, gtk+ or Qt apps — maybe that's a fault of those development environments. Granted, 'disp…

It isn't hard to write native apps, but if you already have a web app, wrapping it in Electron is a lot cheaper.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#388
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go host your own messaging tool: Relay is an alternative to slack. Relay is open source, built on top of Mattermost. This means you can host Relay yourself. https://relay-chat.com/

i see the comparison to slack, but how does it compare to mattermost ?

Mattermost is open core. So I guess that means mattermost has lots of paid features thay relay will have to reimplement. And I wonder if those will be available in the selfhosted version. https://about.mattermost.com/pricing/

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#389
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRC gateway was there to mollify people who said "IRC is better! I refuse to switch!" Slack advocates could say, "Don't worry, you don't have to switch. You can just keep using your IRC client with Slack. Everybody else will have a web UI, which they prefer, and you can keep using Irssi. Everybody wins."

Right, and now that everyone is hooked the loud minority (if we're being honest with ourselves) have to choose between speaking the Slack protocol or losing access to our contacts. Are we doomed as a community to be surprised every time a company with power squeezes?

You are, as long as you give them power by continuing to use proprietary software and protocols.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#390

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

"Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck?" said FooBarWidget to the world, via TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, HTTPS...
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