Modern XMPP project discussion - 2025-04-18

so why can't you do that on XMPP clients?

so if anything it makes less sense for them

you could, but there is no advantage over xmpp links directly

something like a standardized xmpp.to/ could be nice, similar to how with discord or telegram (or matrix) if you click the link and dont have the client installed it has a fallback page to register and download a client (or use web)

https://docs.modernxmpp.org/client/invites/

is btw a could source to explain how to make those invite links

sorry I forgot about that earlier

jjj333, https://invite.joinjabber.org is that

or xmpp.link which is the same

> you could, but there is no advantage over xmpp links directly Could be situations where nothing is correctly registered to handle 'xmpp:' URIs though ↺

ok, rare cases, but you need an xmpp client installed and that usually registers such links

or if you're a weird person that uses multiple clients on the same account ✏

or if you're a weird person that uses multiple clients on the same device ✏

https://invite.joinjabber.org/#romeo@example.com?register;preauth=3c7efeafc1bb10d034

this is what it would look like with that invite page for account registration

or just directly `xmpp:romeo@example.com?register;preauth=3c7efeafc1bb10d034`

and with Prosody you can generate that preauth key to invite people to a server with closed registration

which I think is what I did :3c

given how some other centralized applications function: could just have an 'omnibox' (in the sense of Google Chrome, which merged the address bar and search box into one field; and contextually give options with what input is given), to just have something that when it sees "xmpp:" at the start of an input, to treat it as an xmpp: URI and parse it, and give a human-readable option as a 'result'

general thoughts and feeling on like an xmpp alternative to top.gg for matrix? im thinking instead of using bump, its opt in where itll sort by member count, message frequency, and can list a preview of the chat on the webpage?

like i know room listings already exist, but im thinking more of a interactive experience

top.gg is for discord, no?

e.g. you slap in xmpp:romeo@example.com?roster into the search/omnibox, and it'd give a single option of "Add romeo@example.com to your contacts"; or xmpp:coven@conference.example.com?join to have "Join the cover@conference.example.com groupchat" ✏

> top.gg is for discord, no? yes, hence "xmpp alternative to" ↺

this goes in that direction: https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/JabberCard

e.g. you slap in xmpp:romeo@example.com?roster into the search/omnibox, and it'd give a single option of "Add romeo@example.com to your contacts"; or xmpp:coven@conference.example.com?join to have "Join the coven@conference.example.com groupchat" ✏

jjj333, said for matrix which is way I was confused

> this goes in that direction: https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/JabberCard not at all ↺

then I don't understand what you mean

maybe confusing topics

thats similar to what i was talking about earlier

it has invites and channels previews etc

> it has invites and channels previews etc have you used top.gg ↺

> e.g. you slap in xmpp:romeo@example.com?roster into the search/omnibox, and it'd give a single option of "Add romeo@example.com to your contacts"; or xmpp:coven@conference.example.com?join to have "Join the coven@conference.example.com groupchat" yeah, exactly!! ↺

> have you used top.gg no ↺

> general thoughts and feeling on like an xmpp alternative to top.gg for matrix? im thinking instead of using bump, its opt in where itll sort by member count, message frequency, and can list a preview of the chat on the webpage? i did mean xmpp here ↺

> no yeah its basically a server listing, but you can sort by how recently a member bumped the server (!bump iirc) or member count, with tags and whatnot ↺

it sounds from your description like a mix of search.jabber.network and jabbercard

> it sounds from your description like a mix of search.jabber.network and jabbercard yeah kinda, ↺

like you invite a bot, run a command to opt in, and then it sorts by message frequency and member count, and then someone can click the listing and see the last 20 messages or something

there is the muc activity XEP

so that could be added to search jabber network

and it already supports webchat links for previews

> there is the muc activity XEP yeah the thing that would require a bot would be the message preview, also if it were to be opt in ↺

> so that could be added to search jabber network hm i think that would be a good idea ↺

https://codeberg.org/jssfr/muchopper

open an issue

will do when i get a chance

I can do it

https://codeberg.org/jssfr/muchopper/issues/73

heh, actually that is probably on the roadmap as the XEP author is the same as the author of SJN

I didn't realize

wait turns out top.gg wasnt what i was thinking, i was thinking of disboard

just google it youll get a vibe somewhat

https://disboard.org/

What do you mean... \*scrolls further\* oh right

Is there a public instance of Jabbercard out there to have a look at it? Didn't find one.

> The "sync issues" (assuming you mean not being able to read history before you added a device) is not even a bug, it's the whole design of OMEMO. It's supposed to prevent someone from reading past conversations in case of a compromise. No, that's fine I guess - I do appreciate the idea of perfect forward secrecy. ↺

> or the chaos you get when you add new devices after having verified some of them? Yeah, that _is_ annoying! ↺

> something like a standardized xmpp.to/ could be nice, similar to how with discord or telegram (or matrix) if you click the link and dont have the client installed it has a fallback page to register and download a client (or use web) please no. this is one of the reasons why matrix is horrible. every single link is owned and can be spied on by one company. xmpp: links on the other hand are not. ↺

The sync issue I have observed is when one of my devices hasn't been seen for a while in a chat and other devices seem to stop encrypting for it. So "random" messages here and there become unreadable to me (on that specific device). I think sometimes this self-heals, sometimes not. (Or I'm just not patient enough.)

After reading the convo I do see a need for an "omnibox" of sorts tho. let me open an issue not to forget either

> The sync issue I have observed is when one of my devices hasn't been seen for a while in a chat and other devices seem to stop encrypting for it. So "random" messages here and there become unreadable to me (on that specific device). I think sometimes this self-heals, sometimes not. (Or I'm just not patient enough.) is that not a server archive retention period issue though? Apologies if not I literally set up xmpp 24 hours ago. ✏ ↺

The sync issues I have seen in xmpp are a breeze compared to those I experienced on matrix though. To be fair, I probably caused some of those issues while trying to find working client(s) with encryption support - so many to choose from, so few that actually played nicely. (This was a few years ago.) In the end, I gave up and restorted to using a single client (Fractal) on a single device.

> > The sync issue I have observed is when one of my devices hasn't been seen for a while in a chat and other devices seem to stop encrypting for it. So "random" messages here and there become unreadable to me (on that specific device). I think sometimes this self-heals, sometimes not. (Or I'm just not patient enough.) > is that not a server archive retention period issue though? > Apologies if not I literally set up xmpp 24 hours ago. I don't think it is about server retention, at least not if we're talking of messages. I can see those messages, just not decrypt them. But maybe there is a retention period for devices too? Like a device being kicked from the group after a while? (I have no idea.) ↺

hmm, yeah unsure yeah. And I concur re matrix encryption and sync.

> Is there a public instance of Jabbercard out there to have a look at it? Didn't find one. I could swear I bookmarked one, or at least a page with screenshots of the various layouts, but I can't find it and my search fu is failing me. Maybe if you check out the git repository and set it up yourself? https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/JabberCard ↺

epi: that is what I want to do probably afterwards. But If it doesn't please me in advance, I wouldn't dive deeper into it.

> please no. this is one of the reasons why matrix is horrible. every single link is owned and can be spied on by one company. xmpp: links on the other hand are not. I agree, best not add a single point of failure/single point of surveiilance to a decentralized system. ↺

> epi: that is what I want to do probably afterwards. But If it doesn't please me in advance, I wouldn't dive deeper into it. Makes sense. I just realized that the author of Jabbercard is probably here. Ill try to ping him. ↺

Schimon, is there a place were people can see Jabbercard in action? Or even just screenshots of the various layouts?

> Schimon, is there a place were people can see Jabbercard in action? Or even just screenshots of the various layouts? 👍 ↺

>> epi: that is what I want to do probably afterwards. But If it doesn't please me in advance, I wouldn't dive deeper into it. > Makes sense. I just realized that the author of Jabbercard is probably here. Ill try to ping him. 👍 ↺

Kris, what exactly would you want added to the invitation generator?

The ability to create registration invites easily

>> something like a standardized xmpp.to/ could be nice, similar to how with discord or telegram (or matrix) if you click the link and dont have the client installed it has a fallback page to register and download a client (or use web) > please no. this is one of the reasons why matrix is horrible. every single link is owned and can be spied on by one company. xmpp: links on the other hand are not. just that, I'm glad there's a special URI scheme

Matrix.to can be easily self-hosted though.

It's not really different from the xmpp easy-invite software.

except no one does self host it, because it exists as a service. Just like matrix.org.

or mastodon.social, etc. If yuo provide it, they'll just use it like it is centralised.

I self-host it 😅

> I self-host it 😅 ❤️ ↺

> or mastodon.social, etc. If yuo provide it, they'll just use it like it is centralised. 😢 ↺

You know what I mean though 😉 Most people won't self-host it, of course. ✏

> The ability to create registration invites easily For registration on public servers?

Yes or with an preauth code

Where would you get the preauth code from?

From the server admin?

The server admin would have to get it from the server

and the server emits URIs, not codes

(and URIs can just be pasted into the box)

Well, I get what you are saying, but the same is true for all the other invites, yet the wizard made that much easier. ✏

Sure, but other invites (which don't require a code) just need the JID anyway

If you have the code, it's part of a URI

Just having a code alone is not necessarily enough, because the URI may contain other stuff

If we added all the possible options to the form, it would 1) be confusing, 2) allow people to generate incorrect links

If you have a code, it's part of a URI, just paste the URI instead

The server does the hard work of figuring out what kind of URI to use and what the correct parameters are

Ok but what about without a preauth code

For registration on public servers? We could add a checkbox for that, or you can just type ?register at the end

e.g. enter `yax.im?register` into the box and press Generate link

or we could assume that if you just put a domain there, it's to register and not to chat

That might be easiest

> Schimon, is there a place were people can see Jabbercard in action? Or even just screenshots of the various layouts? epi. dora71. Please read the instructions. There are screenshots at https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/JabberCard/issues/1 ↺

Maybe yeah. I mean the wizard is for people that don't remember or know the url syntax.

> this goes in that direction: https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/JabberCard Kris. Feedbacks would help, because I do not know hiw to further design that software. ↺

I think people are reluctant to test it without a public instance to see it properly first.

And the screenshots are pretty hidden.

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0488.html

Would be nice to support in easy-invite as well.

Even though there is afaik no way yet to generate these invite tokens.

Maybe that could be part of the GC3 specs?

Ah, maybe that is alread supported via the password parameter 🤔

Kris, yeah, as long as the password field isn't removed, it's alright. It can be renamed too if people really want to get rid of that, but removing it entirely would remove compat with legacy network such as IRC

> Kris, yeah, as long as the password field isn't removed, it's alright. It can be renamed too if people really want to get rid of that, but removing it entirely would remove compat with legacy network such as IRC 👍 ↺

> epi. dora71. > Please read the instructions. > There are screenshots at https://git.xmpp-it.net/sch/JabberCard/issues/1 Thanks, bookmarked so I don't lose it again! ↺

btw, ty all here for helping me out regarding invites <3

> btw, ty all here for helping me out regarding invites <3 👍 ↺

> please no. this is one of the reasons why matrix is horrible. every single link is owned and can be spied on by one company. xmpp: links on the other hand are not. fwiw i didnt specify that it had to be one central instance, but generally i would say that in many cases such as this one more novice/normal users generally care about convenience far more than a nebulous and small privacy risk to them ↺

oh i agree. its a hard balance to build for accessibility and for usability without also compromising what we do know and we do want to protect people from. After all its our responsibility as knowledgable people to shift through this stuff and present good solutions and nice interfaces to people. It will sometimes require some learning of course.

Our goal *should never* be to copy discord or whatever other UI just to make it easy. Im saying this looking at the misguided bluesky vs activitypub debates

It is easy to mistake familiarity for ease of use.

yep. agreed

luna: if you install mod_invite_register_web and mod_register_apps (see https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod_invites ), creating invites will generate https links that you can share with the people you're trying to onboard.

The invite page will guide them to install one of the clients available for their OS (you can configure which clients are recommended)

The invite page will use the xmpp: link to let them sign up (or in the case of Google Play apps, it'll be done automagically on app installation)

Thus you don't need to fiddle with xmpp: invites. The users need to already have an xmpp client to be able to open them anyway.

> luna: if you install mod_invite_register_web and mod_register_apps (see https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod_invites ), creating invites will generate https links that you can share with the people you're trying to onboard. already done but yeah, thanks :) ↺

> It is easy to mistake familiarity for ease of use. 👆🏻 ↺

> It is easy to mistake familiarity for ease of use. 👆🏻 ↺