Re: [Tools-discuss] matrix tests

[Matthew Wild <[e-mail]>]

Hi Stephen,

On Fri, 11 Dec 2020 at 20:52, Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> I've run my own matrix server for the last few years for
> non-IETF purposes.
>
> I appreciate the ability to use matrix as mobile clients
> for matrix are more widely available and more up to date
> than for jabber. That (better clients) might be more
> noticeably beneficial when we get back to f2f meetings,
> as in WFM-mode, I have plenty of screen real-estate.
>

I'm curious which clients you tried. On Android there's (at least)
Conversations and yaxim, iOS has (at least) Siskin and Monal. All are
actively developed with releases in the past months, and all of them (to
answer a point you made later in your email) support editing messages.

I had expected there to be a matrix room corresponding
> to each jabber room but I didn't investigate much due
> to the TZ issues and the fact that jabber was fine.
>

There is a Matrix bridge that should allow anyone to join the XMPP chats
from any Matrix client, as I understand it.

I think the main feature in matrix clients that I like
> that beats jabber is the ability to edit messages after
> they've been sent. I'm not sure how that'd pan out with
> the jabber logs, but am happy to do a test if that's
> useful. I'm also happy to connect and play about in
> general if that's helpful, just ping me.
>

As mentioned above, all modern clients support editing messages.

This is a common pattern. Clients such as Pidgin and Adium are popular
among people who are used to Jabber/XMPP from years ago, but both those
projects are seriously lacking behind today's standards. Unfortunately I
think many people form opinions of XMPP based on their experiences with
older "previous generation" software, but modern XMPP has long moved on. I
know the Pidgin folks are keen to catch up, but they have other
project-wide priorities they are focusing on.

On the logs note, I believe with the current setup editing a message will
probably display the updated message as a new message. As with a number of
things in the current IETF XMPP deployment, this is something that could be
improved upon. If the decision is made to stick with XMPP then I think a
bit of modernization of the deployment would be a great thing, and
something I'd be happy to help with.

Regards,
Matthew