XSF Discussion - 2017-01-23

Does anyone have experience with (XMPP-based) solutions that lets you add "chat" to existing web-based platforms?

Like converse.js?

I'm looking at stuff like CoBrowser and SmartSupp - those appear to be oriented towards "chat with one of our employees" - rather than allowing users to chat amongst themselves.

Converse.JS is "simply" a web-based client. I'm wondering about a one-stope solution, of sorts, that includes server and client components

Guus: isn't that what Jive's workgroup xep152 does?

Flow: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0152.html "Reachability Address"? Are you referring to the Workgroup stuff (the FastPath implementation)?

Guus: typo, sorry, xep142,

Flow: that's more of the "ask our employee" stuff, for which I can find various service providers. I'm interested in providers that put more focus on the user-to-user / community aspect

(Yeah, 142 is the FastPath XEP, indeed)

I'm trying to find a list of pros and cons, to compare "run your own server + chat implementations" vs. "use some kind of online service provider that you can integrate with"

I wonder why Kaiwa requires a node.js server to run... can't it operate like converse as a client-only thing?

Yeah, why must all web clients require so much stuff nowdays?

Ge0rG: I think it's just the webserver that serves the js files

Zash, what is "so much stuff" for you ?

why host things statically if you can make it overcomplicated, right? :)

Anything besides a static file server and a browser

daniel: it also seems to contain some crazy ldap frontend!? https://github.com/digicoop/kaiwa/blob/master/server.js

Ge0rG: I think the fornever fork got rid of that

daniel: "You'll need Node.js 4.0+ and npm 3+." from fornever...

Ge0rG: afaik that's just packaging and dependency resolving and stuff like that. Not actually running it

daniel: the README is rather short in that regard.

daniel: I can imagine that the server component does the socket forwarding to the actual server as well, due to typical web browser cross-domain limitations

I'm looking for a web client that doesn't look ugly and supports at least a bunch of useful ("modern") things.

Converse is just a popup, not a full page, candy is not beautiful, and kaiwa requires nodejs

Ge0rG, movim?

well, it’s not all-"web" so it might not fit

Is there someone we can throw money at in exchange for a no-bullshit modern web client?

mathieui: what does 'not all-"web"' mean?

yes. But it's likely going to be more money that you're willing to spend...

Zash: I'm definitely willing to participate in the money throwing process

I've been unsuccessful in finding someone who is able to get kaiwa into a usable state though

Ge0rG, I mean, it’s an xmpp client, but it’s has a server and a client part too

-’s

Swift-Web is done with a server component, too.

Ge0rG: What's ugly about Candy btw?

Zash: it's very minimalistic

Kev: Never heard of

Ge0rG: I like minimalistic

(Kev: for what purpose?)

XMPP to the browser is a nice idea, but terminating on the server makes quite a lot of things easier and/or possible. I was clearly wrong when I objected to Lloyd doing this years ago.

candy is also abandoned and has quite a number of issues, if I remember correctly

ge0rg: because bear had not been beating up lance enough at the point in time otalk.im was written and kaiwa is just a frontend fork? :-p

Zash: You woludn't have, it's not shipped yet so I don't mention it.

Candy is limited to MUC, isn't it?

Kev: MVC with the MC part serverside?

Guus: Yes

(no rosters, no direct chats other than MUC one-on-oneś)

Guus: It does nice things like supporting browser resets and things.

Zash: Something not a million miles away from that.

Kev: can't you have all the nice things with HTML5+JS SPAs?

Kev: is there any info on it online?

Guus: None, sorry.

Kev: ETA?

(ballpark)

I don't have one, sorry. I hate giving dates and being wrong. It's unlikely to be Free, though, so I suspect that means it's not interesting to you.

fippo: pardon?

Kev: you might be wrong there. I mentioned above that i'm interested in paid versions of 'chat service' implementations - especially when they're more than the "click here to chat with one of our support members" types of propositions that I've found so far.

ge0rg: there is a lot of backstory behind kaiwa and otalk.im...

fippo: what I'm wondering is if it would work when served from apache, without nodejs, or if it makes sense to make a feature request for that

ge0rg: kaiwa is still developed? the reason for a node server was that webpack wasn't available back when this stuff was written and webpack makes it very easy to generate a static file that you can upload

fippo: I don't know if it is still developed.

The ForNeVeR fork (<https://github.com/ForNeVeR/Kaiwa>) is still somewhat alive.

But also requires nodejs.

All I want is a nice web frontend to xmpp :>

If you want something done, you usually have to do it yourself.

Ge0rG: I think there was a way to serve the ForNeVeR fork statically. But it might be undocumented. Or nonexistent.

Zash: I can't do everything myself.

Me neither

MattJ: which reminds me... we have a new week now! :P

:/

Is the XSF ical file being update properly now? poke SamWhited?

files* maybe?

Looks like

MattJ: I've been hunting a MUC joining bug in yaxim for half a year or so, and I'm pretty sure it is caused by mod_throttle_presence. But essentially I can't prove it until the latter is fixed :(

Ge0rG: Try the other one I published recently?

Zash, just would nee a nice JS based display widget on xmpp.org website :)

Zash: we have an ical file?

(actually, someone told me about this, but I have no idea where it is or where it comes from)

Apparnently

And it has recent XEPs in it

Now we only need an RSS feed! Let's bring 2000ies tech back to life ✏

SamWhited: whatever this is http://xmpp.org/calendar/xsf-all.ics

Be careful, it's been years but I still disolve into pools of tears at the mention of Google Reader… I miss my feeds.

SamWhited: I'm using tt-rss for many years now. Sometimes it pays off to pick a decentralized crappy solution over a Google property.

I looked into that one, and vaguely remember thinking it was a security disaster waiting to happen, but that was a while ago, don't remember why. Possibly just because it's all written in PHP.

SamWhited: yeah, you can't deploy PHP without http auth.

SamWhited, back in the old days we used https://github.com/buddycloud/buddycloud-xep/blob/master/xmpp/calgen.py to generate calendars

but that script seems to be in none of our repos today

who knows what other fancy tools are there in the past :)

I tried this half a day ago, but since the other side of the world is awake now, I'll rephrase my question one more time:

I'm looking for an IM-as-a-service type of solution, (integration with web, possibly also mobile/desktop), that is not limited to "chat with one of our support staff" type of solutions. An alternative to something that you'd roll on your own as a combination of Converse/Candy et.al., a couple of desktop and mobile clients, and a server of choice. I am aware of the existence of services like smartsupp.com and cobrowser.nl, but those are very support-oriented (and limited to a web integration only, as far as I can tell). I'm looking for something that allows users the communicate amongst themselves.

Thoughts?

Guus, Movim

edhelas: Perhaps. I was under the impression that Movim was more of a complete social network in itself (instead of somethign that you'd easily integrate with an existing platform)?

well you can tune it, depends what you say about "integration"

but if you want a mini-chat on the bottom-right of your website, no it doesn't fit

Is XEP-0066 obsolete?

No, but if you're using it for media then xep-0385 may be a better choice (although I don't think many people have had a chance to implement it yet)

Guus: owncloud had a client only xmpp client plugin but now it can run a server too, whole xmpp server in PHP as plugin

I'm sure it's great /sarcasm :-)