Modern XMPP project discussion - 2021-02-14

Hi. I have a question about the implementation of messages in a groupchat. Who do I identify messages send by me? Do I have to check my state of the client ( "Profanity knows that I'm in this MUC with Nick Stefan") to know that the incoming message has been send by me or do I also need to check the id of the message.

The second question is, do you display the message which is the outgoing message and ignore the incoming message or should we ignore the outgoing message and display the incoming message.

Stefan, do you want to identify messages sent by this specific client (then you need to go by ID / body in addition to the nickname) or do you want to identify messages sent by the user (nickname only)?

Stefan, I think the best UX is to display the outgoing message immediately, wait for and match the reflected message from the MUC and use that to place a tickmark or something next to the outbound message

Thanks, I will try to implemented it in this way. I need to read more code, but should be possible.

Why not replace the outgoing placeholder with the incoming message?

yeah, that’s even better

Stefan: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/XEP-Remarks/XEP-0045:_Multi-User_Chat#Matching_Your_Reflected_Message

Somebody should add the replacement thing.

omg

hi

I've been playing with signal desktop messenger for some days, it has good features like stickers, disapearing messages, message reactions, blurring photos, storage management, photos/videos automatically removed after they are seen, etc Are all of these features possible using xmpp, so are these only overlayers of a xmpp client? How difficult would it be to implement all of this?

cagent, https://chat.modernxmpp.org/paste/4e1bda40-b282-4743-8528-7b8395f7878b

L29Ah, you drunk?

no

> cagent, > https://chat.modernxmpp.org/paste/4e1bda40-b282-4743-8528-7b8395f7878b to blurr elements of the photograph like faces and words like here:

https://xmpp.chapril.org/upload/b56094353a26dce84bce645acf9dfd4a6d6a6e0b/26BITjPYx4A21dDveTfF/wersm-signal-blur-faces-fb.jpg

ah

client side only feature obviously

would make little sense if it was done on the server side

re "how much time will that take": depends on how much money you throw at developers

storage management: you can see how much disk space the files take on your local device

isn’t that a standard android feature?

about disapearing messages some xmpp servers keep the messages only for a few days so that should do trick but some servers can keep them indefinitely (as long as they have disk space left)

cagent, if you’re worried about things on the server, use end-to-end encryption.

> isn’t that a standard android feature? yes you can manage this on android

well I haven't used xmpp a lot but on signal the database that has all the files is encrypted so you cannot manage this with the android file manager applications

it's like signal is a vault and you have to choose between to delete signal+your data or to keep everything encrypted

I don't know if you noticed this already, if not it would be usefull to reach out to systemli.org (a tech collective popular among the activist szene) They started to host matrix. For their launch they wrote a blog post, that doesn't sound well for xmpp. Just as an example: "[XMPP] also does not offer a usable option for encrypting group communication (E2EE)." Full blogpost here: https://www.systemli.org/en/2021/01/25/new-service-modern-messenger-matrix/

Fun.

purplebeetroot: Well, E2EE group chats exist in XMPP too, so either they're misinformed, spreading FUD or have some definition of "usable" that manages to exclude XMPP without also excluding Matrix.

Well I know. Just wanted to leave that here, as I don't know if I'll find the time to contact them. And you're all anyway much better informed about XMPP then I am.

OMEMO with a private group is definitely not where it should be IMO. never worked for me ever. someone always missing keys of someone else