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People need a new modern looking XMPP client, and I want to develop it (lemmy.eus)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

crossposted from here: https://lemmy.eus/post/10482

I believe that XMPP is one of the best protocols for chat communications there is, and I stand up for it. However, the clients that there are, are not comfortable for most people out there used to apps like Telegram, Whatsapp or whatever.

One can defend current XMPP clients saying that quoting with "> " is the traditional way, or that swiping to quote a message is not worth developing; I have plenty more examples like this.
Well, if you think so, OK, use those clients for yourself, but become aware that many people won't use XMPP for just this reason.

After saying all this, I want to tell that I am willing to develop a new, modern looking and comfortable client for XMPP. I think of a client for Android in first instance, but I would have no problem on going further.

However, I don't know programming, so I'm searching programmers who would like to get involved in this.
Although I'm not programmer, I have experience developing software projects, from internationalization to documentation, including ideas about features, testing and all other work there can be.

Will you help me spreading the word? :)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Without programming skills that will be difficult... and I think contributing to existing projects is probably more worthwhile than starting yet another client.

At least for the desktop PC the new UI for Gajim will be really nice and should arrive sometimes soon.

As for Android, I don't see much wrong with Conversations / Blabber.im.

I think some of the features people are asking for are a bit beyond mere client implementation and rather need an agreement on how to implement that first. For example message reactions and stickers exists in Movim, but no other modern client implements these, so they tend to be invisible to a large part of the users of a channel.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 years ago

Yeah, I first (months ago) tried to contribute to some such projects as Blabber, but they didn't go into implementing my proposal, whether because they didn't want to focus their project in that way, whether because it was actually difficult implementing my proposals due to the current code-structure their projects have

I didn't know about the new UI for Gajim, and I really like it, thanks for telling about it!

Conversations and all its forks are good in fact, but they lack a modern/comfortable user interface and functionalities:

how to quote messages
jumping to quoted messages when taping the quotes
treating quotes as unmodifiable elements (currently user can change the quote's content)
render/format the quote while writing message (instead of showing "> ")
emoji access
unique emoji pack, not system's
when searching for messages, showing the results in chat-context
let adding more accounts (only for Blabber.im)
the way multiple accounts are managed (currently all chats from different accounts are put together)
an introductory explanation about what is XMPP, comparing it to email
giving as secondary option creating an account on their project server and as first using any instance (currently the order is inverse)
playing audio recordings having the device stuck to the ear (currently this is not possible)
having message option pop-up dialogs on short tap, instead of long press
navigating into chat multimedia jumping from archive to archive, without needing to go back and forward
ability to select and copy text, not whole message, from a message
some internationalization problems
...

I believe that some clients have implemented them, and I don't know them. I didn't use Movim until now because it doesn't work to me well (I can't still add a node of my choice).

The reason I thought about creating a client from scratch is to avoid problems that appear when you use another's base: they limit what can you do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

I agree with that. The diversity of projects and clients is good, but if people are "afraid" of and don't come to use open-source projects, it's also because there are too many of them. Instead of creating something new to solve problems, it would be better to fix the existing ones. I'm thinking for example of a new UI for Conversations, which works very well, but is not aesthetically appealing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago

Yeah, I thought that the people who renewed K9 Mail's interface could make that too for Conversations, that would be great!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

Im glad they are working on it. It looks great.

At least Conversations on android kinda looks like WA and its easy to use