This Week in Matrix 2023-06-02

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) reports

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

• MSC4025: Local user erasure requests
• MSC4023: Thread ID for 2nd order-relation
• MSC4021: Archive client controls

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

• MSC3523: Timeboxed/ranged relations endpoint

Spec Updates

Part of the SCT's goals with Matrix 1.8 is to pre-plan the majority of our review attention, which means we need to be told what folks are working on to plan accordingly. We'll still have some room for random/surprise MSC work, but this is expected to be harder to acquire going forward (and so should not be relied upon).

Please let us know if you're working on something which affects the spec! We want to hear about:

• things that aren't MSCs (yet)
• things that are MSCs but aren't planned to be merged in 1.8
• MSCs which are expected to be ready in time for Matrix 1.8 (in ~2 months)

If you aren't sure if your project affects the spec, talk to us about it. We do not want to be the bottleneck in your development cycle, instead preferring to know ahead of time that something will need attention from us.

All we need is for you to mention your project/MSC and timeline in the #sct-office:matrix.org - DMs and private rooms with SCT members are not enough to get something on the roadmap. This is to ensure there is full transparency in why the SCT is looking at something, and to ensure that the MSC moves through the process in an efficient manner. If your project has a sensitive context (commercial or otherwise), then we ask that you reference that here and someone from the team will contact you to get more information, relaying as much (non-sensitive) detail as possible back to the room here.

Our expected outcome for this system is to not only be a more effective team, but also to give you a faster/more reasonable turnaround on MSC review (at all stages), more rapid deployment of stable features (dropping unstable prefixes), and overall fewer review iterations as the SCT can think about problems ahead of you actually needing a review. We seriously do not want to be a blocker, but we need to know what we could end up blocking by accident.

Starting approximately August 1st, we will be starting to plan out what Matrix 1.9's release cycle will look like. A similar call to action will be raised at that point. Note that Matrix 1.8 is set to be released in late August, meaning we're aiming to have Matrix 1.9 thought out before Matrix 1.8 is released, which is a deliberately accelerated timeline than the current Matrix 1.8 release cycle planning.

As always, if you have any questions about this, please let us know in #sct-office:matrix.org.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3869: Read event relations with the Widget API!

This MSC would allow Matrix Widgets, knowing an event ID, to request any and all other events that relate to it. Thus, if you had a m.room.message event, you could ask the client whether any edits have been made to that event, via asking for m.room.message events with m.replace relations.

This would be useful for Widgets to traverse any data structure that used relations to tie together events - which could model all sorts of use cases!

As always, leave your feedback on the MSC if this is something you're interested in or want to push forwards :)

Dept of Servers 🏢

Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by the matrix.org core team

Shay reports

It's Friday which means it's time for another TWIM. This week the backend team released Synapse v1.85.0rc2. Notable highlights include:

• Fix a performance issue introduced in Synapse v1.83.0 which meant that purging rooms was very slow and database-intensive
• Improve performance of backfill requests by performing backfill of previously failed requests in the background.
• Fix a long-standing bug where setting the read marker could fail when using message retention
• Fix a long-standing bug where deactivated users were still able to login using the custom org.matrix.login.jwt login type (if enabled)

And so much more! To read about everything in the release, take a look at the release notes here and otherwise have a great week.

Dept of Clients 📱

FluffyChat (website)

Krille-chan reports

In FluffyChat we are still working on finishing the new release and polish the new html message rendering. We are nearly done and are also fixing our CI configuration so that all platforms receive the release without further problems (hopefully :D). Beside of that there is a nice merge request from @theonewiththebraid for animated emojis. For more information click here: https://gitlab.com/famedly/fluffychat/-/merge_requests/1124 (also contains a video) I really like it but before merging I would like to find a way how we can reduce the app size first.

Stay tuned <3

Element Web/Desktop (website)

Secure and independent communication, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-web:matrix.org!

Johannes Marbach announces

• Work on stuck notifications continues and we think we've been able to unblock the release scheduled for next week and are preparing the necessary spec changes. The overall status is tracked in vector-im/element-web#24392.
• We've completed testing for our intentional mentions and design review for the notification settings update. Getting close now as we've started discussing rollout strategies.
• We started putting together a plan for integrating Compound, our new design system, into Element Web. Watch this space for more updates in the near future.

Element iOS (website)

Secure and independent communication for iOS, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-ios:matrix.org!

Doug announces

This week on Element iOS we’ve added support for sharing your device’s screen whilst in a Jitsi video call.

Element Android (website)

Secure and independent communication for Android, connected via Matrix. Come talk with us in #element-android:matrix.org!

benoit says

Element Android will get a new release candidate 1.6.2 with more fixes following the release with the Crypto Rust SDK. In particular, some ANR (Application Not Responding) have been fixed.

Element X iOS (website)

Doug announces

• When replying to a message, a preview of the message is now shown above the composer.
• The authentication flow has been reworked in preparation for OIDC support.
• Many fixes for navigation within the app, app launch, notifications and incorrect colours.

Element X Android (website)

benoit reports

More and more features are available on EAx! We are working on media upload and media rendering, and are improving the general rendering of the timeline. Also worth noting that notifications now include messages content and meta-data such as sender name and sender avatar!

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

matrix-rust-sdk (website)

Next-gen crypto-included SDK for developing Clients, Bots and Appservices; written in Rust with bindings for Node, Swift and WASM

Jonas Platte reports

This week was a short one, since some team members were off due to national holidays on Monday and Tuesday. Nevertheless, we:

• Added the ability to specify a temporary directory for media fetches (to be merged after testing)
• Upgraded vodozemac
• Improved the Sliding Sync code: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
• Removed matrix-sdk-sled because sqlite has proven to be very stable, and we don't want to sink time into something we're not using anymore

Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Call for Participation (CfP): Matrix Community Summit 2023

Christian Paul (jaller94) says

We are looking for talks and workshops. From the past to the future, from the moment of the idea, the story of the creation or the vision of the future. We’d like to understand the principles as well as the technology.

Come to Berlin in September to present your Matrix projects and products!

• Thursday, 21th September - Matrix Summit Barcamp (no schedule)
• Fri + Sat, 22th and 23th September - Matrix Summit Conference (CfP open now)

https://summit2023.matrixmeetup.de/conference/

We try to keep everything low-cost. But we need some money for food, drinks, merch, recording services, travel and accommodation. Please contact us via e-mail about sponsoring the event. The e-mail address can be found on the website above.

Matrix User Meetup Berlin

saces says

Next Matrix user meetup 7.6.2023, 8 pm @ c-base

Meet other matrix users, chat about Matrix, the rest, and everything else, discuss your Matrix ideas, sign each other in persona, and maybe spice the evening with a good mate or beer.

Also when the bbq is lit you may wish you brougth your favorite item :)

Every first Wednesday of the month in the c-base at 8pm ('til the next pandemic).

Matrix room: #mumb:c-base.org

Dept of Ping

Here we reveal, rank, and applaud the homeservers with the lowest ping, as measured by pingbot, a maubot that you can host on your own server.

#ping:maunium.net

Join #ping:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

Rank	Hostname	Median MS
1	test.zemos.net	319
2	zemos.net	623
3	075-141-169-120.res.spectrum.com:8446	723
4	kittenface.studio	738
5	wcore.org	1086.5
6	projectsegfau.lt	2187
7	brockhus.com.au	2800.5
8	abot.xyz	3155.5
9	chrrreeeeesss.com	5201.5
10	matrix.org	5415

#ping-no-synapse:maunium.net

Join #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

Rank	Hostname	Median MS
1	test.zemos.net	129.5
2	zemos.net	206
3	777.tf	217.5
4	sibnsk.net	241.5
5	075-141-169-120.res.spectrum.com:8446	250.5
6	matrix.org	376
7	herkulessi.de	455
8	rustybever.be	692
9	herkinf.de	1037.5
10	grin.hu	11110

That's all I know

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!