6 ms·

I hope Telegram adopts Matrix (alongside or instead of their own protocol). Their clients (on linux/windows/android) are really an exemplar of how should a refi

I hope Telegram adopts Matrix (alongside or instead of their own protocol). Their clients (on linux/windows/android) are really an exemplar of how should a refined snappy cross-platform app should be written.

southerntofu 5y ago
Just for reference, gitter.im did just that a while back. It's really nice to be able to join a gitter channel using a client of my choice and not a crappy web interface.
- detaro 5y ago
  (Although gitter.im isn't really a "third-party" adopting it, given they were aquired by Matrix developers: https://blog.gitter.im/2020/09/30/gitter-element-acquisition/ https://blog.gitter.im/2020/09/30/gitter-element-acquisition...)
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Oh, that's interesting. I did not see any amount of money in those blogposts, do you have an idea how much it cost? Also it appears Gitter is actually not operating a matrix server, but is instead bridged with https://www.matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/native-gitter-bridge https://www.matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/native-gitter-br... ? Does that mean gitter.im is only reachable from matrix.org? Personally when i had to join a gitter room, i would join from my XMPP account using the @matrix.org gateway (which despite being unreliable is very nice) so i have no clue.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Some of the Matrix folks are active on HN, maybe they mentioned something in the discussions back then? But I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't much if anything - my impression was that Gitlab didn't really know what to do with gitter, so giving it to messaging-focused project would make some sense. No, bridged rooms generally are reachable from any instance. It's just that the bridge talks to matrix.org and matrix.org "hosts" (that's not 100% accurate afaik to how Matrix works, but close enough for this) the room just like any other matrix.org room, that is also reachable from other instances.
    - Tmpod 5y ago
      From what I know, they are still bridging, but in the long run (I assume they are somewhat waiting for stable Dendrite, since Synapse is shit for massive deployments) I believe they want to run an actual homeserver in gitter.im and have a sort of Gitter themed/branded Element client for it.
      - escalt 5y ago
        This is already the case. There is an actual matrix server reachable @gitter.im and you can join gitter rooms through it
        southerntofu 5y ago
        ah thanks for that information! it was not apparent from the blogpost/docs about it on matrix side
Youden 5y ago
The clients are open-source [0], maybe they'd accept contributions? Worst-case a fork could work. [0]: https://telegram.org/apps https://telegram.org/apps
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chrismorgan 5y ago
I wouldn’t consider Telegram a well-done cross-platform app. It’s a mobile app, badly ported to desktop, and I find telegram-desktop quite annoying under Linux. Here are most of the ways where there are actual problems, quite apart from it just using foreign UI design paradigms that make it not fit in: Its keyboard accessibility is very poor: about all you can do is switching between conversations, scrolling inside a conversation, posting messages, and editing recent messages. You can’t interact with any buttons, menus or popups that they open. Its text editing fields (plain and rich text) get caret navigation wrong for the platform, e.g. Ctrl+Right moves to the start of the next word, rather than the end of the current word; and punctuation is treated as a separate “word” rather than being grouped with a preceding (in the direction of navigation) word. Its rich text editing component (for sending messages) doesn’t let you format text while typing: “hello, <Ctrl+I>world” should make the second word italic, but that Ctrl+I doesn’t actually do anything: you have to type “hello, world”, then go back and select “world” and press Ctrl+I. (This is by far the most frustrating of the issues, resulting in me mostly just not formatting messages.) When I type emoji in (via a Compose key in my case, but it’s hardly the only way of typing emoji natively), they appear as rectangles, and stay that way until you post the message or type a character before the emoji, at which point it swaps it for a graphical emoji.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  not disagreeing with any of your problems, but i guess the point was that there are barely any other significant mobile messengers that also _have_ a desktop app, let alone one that is snappy. Disclamiar: telegram user on windows, linux, ios and android
  - Y_Y 5y ago
    The web interface for WhatsApp is really good. Fast and simple and the main thing I miss in Signal and Telegram.
    - hansel_der 5y ago
      just out of curiosity; what are the benefits of the WA-webinterface over a native client? (yes, e2ee yadada, but really)
grishka 5y ago
There's already a bot that bridges Telegram chats to Matrix.

southerntofu 5y ago

Just for reference, gitter.im did just that a while back. It's really nice to be able to join a gitter channel using a client of my choice and not a crappy web interface.

detaro 5y ago
(Although gitter.im isn't really a "third-party" adopting it, given they were aquired by Matrix developers: https://blog.gitter.im/2020/09/30/gitter-element-acquisition/ https://blog.gitter.im/2020/09/30/gitter-element-acquisition...)
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Oh, that's interesting. I did not see any amount of money in those blogposts, do you have an idea how much it cost? Also it appears Gitter is actually not operating a matrix server, but is instead bridged with https://www.matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/native-gitter-bridge https://www.matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/native-gitter-br... ? Does that mean gitter.im is only reachable from matrix.org? Personally when i had to join a gitter room, i would join from my XMPP account using the @matrix.org gateway (which despite being unreliable is very nice) so i have no clue.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Some of the Matrix folks are active on HN, maybe they mentioned something in the discussions back then? But I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't much if anything - my impression was that Gitlab didn't really know what to do with gitter, so giving it to messaging-focused project would make some sense. No, bridged rooms generally are reachable from any instance. It's just that the bridge talks to matrix.org and matrix.org "hosts" (that's not 100% accurate afaik to how Matrix works, but close enough for this) the room just like any other matrix.org room, that is also reachable from other instances.
  - Tmpod 5y ago
    From what I know, they are still bridging, but in the long run (I assume they are somewhat waiting for stable Dendrite, since Synapse is shit for massive deployments) I believe they want to run an actual homeserver in gitter.im and have a sort of Gitter themed/branded Element client for it.
    - escalt 5y ago
      This is already the case. There is an actual matrix server reachable @gitter.im and you can join gitter rooms through it
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        ah thanks for that information! it was not apparent from the blogpost/docs about it on matrix side

Youden 5y ago

The clients are open-source [0], maybe they'd accept contributions? Worst-case a fork could work. [0]: https://telegram.org/apps https://telegram.org/apps

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chrismorgan 5y ago

I wouldn’t consider Telegram a well-done cross-platform app. It’s a mobile app, badly ported to desktop, and I find telegram-desktop quite annoying under Linux. Here are most of the ways where there are actual problems, quite apart from it just using foreign UI design paradigms that make it not fit in: Its keyboard accessibility is very poor: about all you can do is switching between conversations, scrolling inside a conversation, posting messages, and editing recent messages. You can’t interact with any buttons, menus or popups that they open. Its text editing fields (plain and rich text) get caret navigation wrong for the platform, e.g. Ctrl+Right moves to the start of the next word, rather than the end of the current word; and punctuation is treated as a separate “word” rather than being grouped with a preceding (in the direction of navigation) word. Its rich text editing component (for sending messages) doesn’t let you format text while typing: “hello, <Ctrl+I>world” should make the second word italic, but that Ctrl+I doesn’t actually do anything: you have to type “hello, world”, then go back and select “world” and press Ctrl+I. (This is by far the most frustrating of the issues, resulting in me mostly just not formatting messages.) When I type emoji in (via a Compose key in my case, but it’s hardly the only way of typing emoji natively), they appear as rectangles, and stay that way until you post the message or type a character before the emoji, at which point it swaps it for a graphical emoji.

hansel_der 5y ago
not disagreeing with any of your problems, but i guess the point was that there are barely any other significant mobile messengers that also _have_ a desktop app, let alone one that is snappy. Disclamiar: telegram user on windows, linux, ios and android
- Y_Y 5y ago
  The web interface for WhatsApp is really good. Fast and simple and the main thing I miss in Signal and Telegram.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    just out of curiosity; what are the benefits of the WA-webinterface over a native client? (yes, e2ee yadada, but really)

grishka 5y ago

There's already a bot that bridges Telegram chats to Matrix.