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Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

matrix.org

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Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#71

Post by Arathorn »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #55

I'm not very much into chat apps and protocols, but isn't it possible to just revive XMPP? Ten years ago we used Adium and Pidgin, and federated chat seemed like a solved problem. I understand XMPP with its extensions and use of XML fragments might be complex, but it sounds like matrix or another new protocol isn't easier. In a way, those willing to invest time into F/OSS chat apps have done the best they could with…

We have almost finished a pretty decent XMPP to Matrix bridge, if you are attached to XMPP (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-bifrost with a bridge running at bridge.xmpp.matrix.org). However, Matrix has a fundamentally different architecture: replicating conversation history over a full mesh of participating nodes, rather than passing messages via a star topology, and we opted to build that as a fresh stack rather than creating a mutant hybrid of XMPP.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#72

Post by ubercow13 »

Gigablah wrote: post #47
nicklaf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to knock the hard work the Riot developers have put into their application, but I just don't understand: why does 'modern' web design seem to require wasting so much white space? Looking at the screenshot on that blog post, the actual chat transcript is somewhere in the middle of the screen (sandwiched between giant sidebars on either side). Compare to irssi (or any other console IRC program), which uses…

Why would you want messages to span the entire screen? https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-be...

What if your window doesn't span the entire screen? It's a frustrating and common flaw in so many modern websites and apps that they simply do not work unless the app is fullscreen on a widescreen monitor.

For example Discord is borderline unusable if it is one of two windows side-by-side on my laptop, and completely unusable if you have three. This can't even be an unusual case for people on UNIX derivatives using tiling window managers - Windows has had functionality to tile windows like this since 7. Whatever happened to responsive design? See Telegram desktop client for an example of how it should work - the layout actually changes as you resize the window.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#73

Post by feanaro »

StudentStuff wrote: post #46
Arathorn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "good luck talking to your own federation" comment is being taken out of context. I can't find it in my history (so I assume it's been paraphrased), plus from memory I think it was the final line in an argument over how some bit of the protocol should be implemented. After failing to convince the guy that our approach was better than his proposal, I gave up with "okay, you can always do it your way, but you'll on…

It'd be great if there were usable non-Riot clients that fully supported end to end cryptography. At this point Signal has better alternative clients in Pyre.chat and Signal-Weechat than Matrix has, as the existing alternative clients are almost all MVPs missing major features like e2e. The lack of a simple, common library is a real sticking point. Each client & bot shouldn't have to implement the baseline network pr…

There's weechat-matrix[1] which supports E2EE and the accompanying python library, nio[2].

[1]: https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix/

[2]: https://github.com/poljar/matrix-nio/

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#75

Post by johnisgood »

nicklaf wrote: post #50
Gigablah wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want messages to span the entire screen? https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-be...

Because: window managers! http://i.imgur.com/4K0pa6m.jpg That said...I must confess that irssi uses a non-trivial amount of margin space as well!

I use Wire which has a similar problem to Riot. That is now 2 different workspaces just for "chatting" (they take up an entire workspace to be usable, because it wastes space, not good, IMO), then there is another for IRC on which I can also have a browser anyway because the terminal is only 80x24. I stopped using Riot because of it, and I might stop using Wire, too. :/ I hope they will fix it in Wire though, for example, by making the friend list collapsible or something.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#76

Post by johnisgood »

Gigablah wrote: post #47
nicklaf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to knock the hard work the Riot developers have put into their application, but I just don't understand: why does 'modern' web design seem to require wasting so much white space? Looking at the screenshot on that blog post, the actual chat transcript is somewhere in the middle of the screen (sandwiched between giant sidebars on either side). Compare to irssi (or any other console IRC program), which uses…

Why would you want messages to span the entire screen? https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-be...

> So keep your paragraph width between 50 and 70 characters.

Yes, I have a terminal (xterm) with irssi running, that terminal is 80x24, and give or take the timestamps, it is indeed between 50 and 70 characters.

Whereas Wire and Riot takes up the entire screen as a single window.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#77

Post by hannob »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #55

I'm not very much into chat apps and protocols, but isn't it possible to just revive XMPP? Ten years ago we used Adium and Pidgin, and federated chat seemed like a solved problem. I understand XMPP with its extensions and use of XML fragments might be complex, but it sounds like matrix or another new protocol isn't easier. In a way, those willing to invest time into F/OSS chat apps have done the best they could with…

Matrix is the perfect example of xkcd 927 - https://xkcd.com/927/

They built something like XMPP, just a bit different. What they got is more fragmentation in the space of free messaging. None of the justifications they have how their approach is different justifies the costs of additional fragmentation they create.

This is super frustrating, people don't seem to have an understanding what the costs of incompatibilities are. You can also observe pretty much the same at the micro level of within XMPP and encryption standards, where everyone seems to think the solution is yet another encryption standard instead of having just one.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#78

Post by ajconway »

Arathorn wrote: post #70
aitchnyu wrote: post #40

Off-topic, but Whatsapp provides E2E for groups upto 256. Matrix can apparently provide E2E for bigger groups. Did they do scaling better?

yup. we layer megolm on top of olm (double ratchet) to scale to ~1000 or further.

Looks like every device still has to establish an olm channel with every other device in the group. Does that scale?

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#79

Post by stagas »

amiraliakbari wrote: post #53
zaarn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federation is a form of decentralization.

No, decentralization is invented alongside the blockchain and nothing without a blockchain is decentralized. :)

No, you don't need a blockchain for decentralization. Also, you don't need a blockchain[0].

[0]: https://thomaslarock.com/2018/11/no-you-dont-need-a-blockcha...

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#80

Post by Arathorn »

hannob wrote: post #77
tannhaeuser wrote: post #55

I'm not very much into chat apps and protocols, but isn't it possible to just revive XMPP? Ten years ago we used Adium and Pidgin, and federated chat seemed like a solved problem. I understand XMPP with its extensions and use of XML fragments might be complex, but it sounds like matrix or another new protocol isn't easier. In a way, those willing to invest time into F/OSS chat apps have done the best they could with…

Matrix is the perfect example of xkcd 927 - https://xkcd.com/927/ They built something like XMPP, just a bit different. What they got is more fragmentation in the space of free messaging. None of the justifications they have how their approach is different justifies the costs of additional fragmentation they create. This is super frustrating, people don't seem to have an understanding what the costs of incompatibilit…

I'd counter and suggest that the super frustrating thing is XMPP zealots saying "oh my god how dare you try to create a different protocol". With this mentality, nothing would evolve and we'd be stuck on svn rather than git...

To reiterate once again, the things which Matrix tries to do differently to XMPP include:

* Be a replicated conversation database for realtime conversations, more like usenet (NNTP) if anything than IRC or XMPP or SMTP (or, alternatively, an open standard alternative to Slack, which is also focused all around syncing conversation rather than passing messages).

* All conversations are group conversations. There are no such thing as 1:1s; just a room with 2 people in it.

* To be clear: there are no APIs to send a message from one user to another in Matrix. Instead, you sync a message to a room, which updates its conversation history, and the history update is then synced to all the other servers (and users) in the room.

* Have a single monolithic versioned protocol (https://matrix.org/docs/spec) rather than a finely granular cloud of XEPs which may or may not be compatible or best practices or implemented at any given point.

* Build in E2E encryption from the outset.

* Implementation before formalising spec

* A "there is not more than one way to do it" mentality on developing the spec (i.e. a python rather than a perl approach)

Meanwhile, we have spent a lot of time writing decent bridges to ensure that we do not fragment communication with chat systems - be they open or closed. For instance, right now, I see 41 people participating in Matrix HQ from XMPP, ~200 from IRC, ~40 from discord, ~20 from telegram, 5 from slack, and the rest (~3000, including idlers) from elsewhere in Matrix.

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