4 ms·

eul is a light (4 MB) native desktop client for all popular messengers: https://eul.im https://eul.im Signal support is coming later this year. Right now it s

eul is a light (4 MB) native desktop client for all popular messengers: https://eul.im https://eul.im Signal support is coming later this year. Right now it supports Slack, Skype, Facebook, and Gmail.

jotto 9y ago
is eul open source?
- Deimorz 9y ago
  The author said yesterday that he wants to open-source it, but won't be able to do it fully (he didn't elaborate on why not): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587970
  - woolvalley 9y ago
    I think he is waiting for it to be a certain level of 'done' before he open sources it. Open sourcing something creates it's own workload.
    - Deimorz 9y ago
      No, I think it's more than that. He specifically said that it won't be possible to open-source some parts.
      - amedvednikov 9y ago
        You both are right actually :)
nikisweeting 9y ago
Rambox (Open source) https://github.com/saenzramiro/rambox https://github.com/saenzramiro/rambox Franz https://github.com/meetfranz/franz https://github.com/meetfranz/franz These are similar apps. Though they do use Electron, they let you share one Electron instance for all your chat services.
- lewisl9029 9y ago
  Thanks for the links! I knew about Rambox, but wasn't aware of Franz. Looks excellent. My main problem with Rambox when I first tried it was that it couldn't remember my sessions across restarts for some reason. A quick test shows that Franz doesn't have this problem. Also, the API for adding new integrations looks delightfully simple [1]! I'll probably take some time over the weekend to try to port over some of the things I use frequently that aren't yet available. Though it'd be even better if it offered a first-class escape hatch to add simple integrations through the app itself like Rambox does. [1] https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins/blob/master/docs/integration.md https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins/blob/master/docs/integr...
axaxs 9y ago
does it support relevant slack features...gifs, slackmojis, tags, etc?
- amedvednikov 9y ago
  Not yet. Right now only mentions and threaded conversations are supported. But most of these features will be implemented in the future.
- stephenr 9y ago
  Those core, must have features right? "Oh no I can't use that business chat tool, it doesn't support smiley faces and cat reaction gifs".
  - captainmuon 9y ago
    Those features are important, if your colleagues are using them. You don't want to miss an ironically winking emoji, or a gif showing that your colleague is getting slowly frustrated. It is hard enough to convey emotion and other metadata through text, but you should at least all see the same thing.
    - stephenr 9y ago
      if your whole team is using IRC (or using nothing and choosing what to use) they by definition aren't using those "features". Also, if you're relying on a stupid cat gif to judge your colleagues mental well-being (and you are concerned about their mental well-being), perhaps you need to spend more time talking to them and less time searching for dank memes.
  - axaxs 9y ago
    Maybe relevant wasn't the right word. But it's what makes slack slack, over say, irc.
    - stephenr 9y ago
      Disagree. The key thing Slack offers most 'customers' (even those who don't pay) compared to something like IRC is the simple setup/use. I say this as someone who hates Slack, but has had to endure it on a number of client projects.
dilap 9y ago
native in that it's not a web-app, sure, but it sure doesn't feel like a native citizen on the mac. window can't be resized, standard menus are missing, standard keyboard shortcuts for text fields don't work, conversion text can't be selected, no way to cut or copy text (tho paste does seem to work). is it implementing its own ui toolkit? qt maybe?
- flukus 9y ago
  Elsewhere they said opengl, which is why all that stuff doesn't work. You are correct though, it might be native code but it's not a native app.
- amedvednikov 9y ago
  These are valid observations. Right now the focus is on features and performance, but the app is going to be polished before the 1.0 release to have a more native feel: native notifications, shortcuts, textfields, etc.
  - dilap 9y ago
    cool, good to hear. with enough dedication and an eye for ui detail, i believe it is possible to make a custom-widget app feel like a good citizen -- the unity editor is a good example of this, imo. it's a ton of work tho! (actually, i'm not sure if it's possible to make your app friendly to screen readers w/o using native widgets. maybe?) if you do pull it off, you'll end up with a great ui toolkit for go. that would be a very interesting thing!
    - mwcampbell 9y ago
      Non-native widgets can certainly be accessible with screen readers and other assistive technologies. But it's a lot of work. You'll need to implement the UI Automation provider API for Windows, AT-SPI for desktop Linux, and the Cocoa accessibility API for Mac. And you probably won't get any of them right the first time. So I think it would have been better not to create a custom toolkit.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bringtheaction 9y ago
Pidgin is native, mature and open source
ktta 9y ago
Calling it 4MB is a bit ludicrous. On first run (on linux) it downloads half a GB worth (508 MB to be exact) of 'browser content'. On first run. So this isn't light or native. It uses the same Chromium codebase, but atleast twice the size of Electron apps. https://hardbin.com/ipfs/QmNttGPf65DZ3eeuNCCWemrxyNzaHxLhpAZrwEhLNzUj76/#7NGJLEtBs7NrLNxymTWg4N7L5Ci4SzbhH6XY5djwLk7N https://hardbin.com/ipfs/QmNttGPf65DZ3eeuNCCWemrxyNzaHxLhpAZ... If the rest of you are wondering where the bulk of it came from, check libcef.so (466 MB)- which is Chromium Embedded Framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework
- MarkSweep 9y ago
  For what it's worth, it only uses that when adding an account initially to display the login webpage. The CEF is not used in normal operation of the app. It appears the app's GUI is created using OpenGL. That said, I could not get the app to work with Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger after 5 minutes of fiddling, so I gave up.
  - pritambaral 9y ago
    It still downloads half a GB.
  - hiimnate 9y ago
    Why in the world would they do that? Can't they just launch a normal browser window or something? Downloading 500MB of chrome bloat just to display a login window seems ludicrous.
    - amedvednikov 9y ago
      eul requires cookies for authentication. Initially it was decrypting Chrome cookies, but this was rightfully detected and flagged by antivirus software. I'll switch to Servo in the future, it's only ~20MB.
      - deleted 9y ago
vxNsr 9y ago
I need something like this for my phone. I never used it but I heard about blackberry's messenger app that brought all the messaging services of its day together, why doesn't this exist on every platform today!?!?! (rhetorical, I know why)
- tomc1985 9y ago
  Used to, there were a ton of multi-chat-network desktop clients back in the day. Several still exist... Trillian, MirandaIM, Pidgin. Not sure what the mobile scene is like, but this problem was solved decades ago
mynewtb 9y ago
Stop spamming your business on all chat threads.
- zbentley 9y ago
  This is a thread about an instant messaging client. Regardless of what posts they may have made elsewhere, it is definitely relevant here.

jotto 9y ago

is eul open source?

Deimorz 9y ago
The author said yesterday that he wants to open-source it, but won't be able to do it fully (he didn't elaborate on why not): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587970
- woolvalley 9y ago
  I think he is waiting for it to be a certain level of 'done' before he open sources it. Open sourcing something creates it's own workload.
  - Deimorz 9y ago
    No, I think it's more than that. He specifically said that it won't be possible to open-source some parts.
    - amedvednikov 9y ago
      You both are right actually :)

nikisweeting 9y ago

Rambox (Open source) https://github.com/saenzramiro/rambox https://github.com/saenzramiro/rambox Franz https://github.com/meetfranz/franz https://github.com/meetfranz/franz These are similar apps. Though they do use Electron, they let you share one Electron instance for all your chat services.

lewisl9029 9y ago
Thanks for the links! I knew about Rambox, but wasn't aware of Franz. Looks excellent. My main problem with Rambox when I first tried it was that it couldn't remember my sessions across restarts for some reason. A quick test shows that Franz doesn't have this problem. Also, the API for adding new integrations looks delightfully simple [1]! I'll probably take some time over the weekend to try to port over some of the things I use frequently that aren't yet available. Though it'd be even better if it offered a first-class escape hatch to add simple integrations through the app itself like Rambox does. [1] https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins/blob/master/docs/integration.md https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins/blob/master/docs/integr...

axaxs 9y ago

does it support relevant slack features...gifs, slackmojis, tags, etc?

amedvednikov 9y ago
Not yet. Right now only mentions and threaded conversations are supported. But most of these features will be implemented in the future.
stephenr 9y ago
Those core, must have features right? "Oh no I can't use that business chat tool, it doesn't support smiley faces and cat reaction gifs".
- captainmuon 9y ago
  Those features are important, if your colleagues are using them. You don't want to miss an ironically winking emoji, or a gif showing that your colleague is getting slowly frustrated. It is hard enough to convey emotion and other metadata through text, but you should at least all see the same thing.
  - stephenr 9y ago
    if your whole team is using IRC (or using nothing and choosing what to use) they by definition aren't using those "features". Also, if you're relying on a stupid cat gif to judge your colleagues mental well-being (and you are concerned about their mental well-being), perhaps you need to spend more time talking to them and less time searching for dank memes.
- axaxs 9y ago
  Maybe relevant wasn't the right word. But it's what makes slack slack, over say, irc.
  - stephenr 9y ago
    Disagree. The key thing Slack offers most 'customers' (even those who don't pay) compared to something like IRC is the simple setup/use. I say this as someone who hates Slack, but has had to endure it on a number of client projects.

dilap 9y ago

native in that it's not a web-app, sure, but it sure doesn't feel like a native citizen on the mac. window can't be resized, standard menus are missing, standard keyboard shortcuts for text fields don't work, conversion text can't be selected, no way to cut or copy text (tho paste does seem to work). is it implementing its own ui toolkit? qt maybe?

flukus 9y ago
Elsewhere they said opengl, which is why all that stuff doesn't work. You are correct though, it might be native code but it's not a native app.
amedvednikov 9y ago
These are valid observations. Right now the focus is on features and performance, but the app is going to be polished before the 1.0 release to have a more native feel: native notifications, shortcuts, textfields, etc.
- dilap 9y ago
  cool, good to hear. with enough dedication and an eye for ui detail, i believe it is possible to make a custom-widget app feel like a good citizen -- the unity editor is a good example of this, imo. it's a ton of work tho! (actually, i'm not sure if it's possible to make your app friendly to screen readers w/o using native widgets. maybe?) if you do pull it off, you'll end up with a great ui toolkit for go. that would be a very interesting thing!
  - mwcampbell 9y ago
    Non-native widgets can certainly be accessible with screen readers and other assistive technologies. But it's a lot of work. You'll need to implement the UI Automation provider API for Windows, AT-SPI for desktop Linux, and the Cocoa accessibility API for Mac. And you probably won't get any of them right the first time. So I think it would have been better not to create a custom toolkit.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bringtheaction 9y ago

Pidgin is native, mature and open source

ktta 9y ago

Calling it 4MB is a bit ludicrous. On first run (on linux) it downloads half a GB worth (508 MB to be exact) of 'browser content'. On first run. So this isn't light or native. It uses the same Chromium codebase, but atleast twice the size of Electron apps. https://hardbin.com/ipfs/QmNttGPf65DZ3eeuNCCWemrxyNzaHxLhpAZrwEhLNzUj76/#7NGJLEtBs7NrLNxymTWg4N7L5Ci4SzbhH6XY5djwLk7N https://hardbin.com/ipfs/QmNttGPf65DZ3eeuNCCWemrxyNzaHxLhpAZ... If the rest of you are wondering where the bulk of it came from, check libcef.so (466 MB)- which is Chromium Embedded Framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework

MarkSweep 9y ago
For what it's worth, it only uses that when adding an account initially to display the login webpage. The CEF is not used in normal operation of the app. It appears the app's GUI is created using OpenGL. That said, I could not get the app to work with Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger after 5 minutes of fiddling, so I gave up.
- pritambaral 9y ago
  It still downloads half a GB.
- hiimnate 9y ago
  Why in the world would they do that? Can't they just launch a normal browser window or something? Downloading 500MB of chrome bloat just to display a login window seems ludicrous.
  - amedvednikov 9y ago
    eul requires cookies for authentication. Initially it was decrypting Chrome cookies, but this was rightfully detected and flagged by antivirus software. I'll switch to Servo in the future, it's only ~20MB.
    - deleted 9y ago

vxNsr 9y ago

I need something like this for my phone. I never used it but I heard about blackberry's messenger app that brought all the messaging services of its day together, why doesn't this exist on every platform today!?!?! (rhetorical, I know why)

tomc1985 9y ago
Used to, there were a ton of multi-chat-network desktop clients back in the day. Several still exist... Trillian, MirandaIM, Pidgin. Not sure what the mobile scene is like, but this problem was solved decades ago

mynewtb 9y ago

Stop spamming your business on all chat threads.

zbentley 9y ago
This is a thread about an instant messaging client. Regardless of what posts they may have made elsewhere, it is definitely relevant here.