This Week in Matrix 2024-10-18

Dept of Social Good 🙆

spaetz says

The German Data Protection Officer is creating a catalogue of criteria to assess messengers. They still take feedback till Nov 15. List of criteria is available in German and English.

Toot: https://social.bund.de/@bfdi/113306169664247379

English criterion pdf link is: https://www.bfdi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/Konsultationsverfahren/3_Messengerdienste/Katalog-SMA-Front-End.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2

Dept of Spec 📜

TravisR says

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:

• MSC4213: Remove server_name parameter
• MSC4211: WebXDC on Matrix

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• MSC4170: 403 error responses for profile APIs

Closed MSCs:

• MSC3060: Room labels
• MSC4214: Embedding Widgets in Messages

Spec Updates

Matrix 1.12 went out last week! This release contains a few Trust & Safety improvements, bug fixes for authenticated media, an ability to mark rooms as unread, and several other quality of life features. Check it out, and get an early preview for what the next release might look like 👀

If there's something you'd like the Spec Core Team to take a look at, let us know in our office room: #sct-office:matrix.org

Dept of Servers 🏢

Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by Element

Quentin Gliech reports

This week we released v1.117.0. The highlights of this release are essentially many small performance increases, mostly for the new MSC4186 sliding sync implementation.

As always, check out the full release notes to make sure you don't miss any of the exciting changes! Feel free to stop by #synapse:matrix.org to join in on the discussion and if you encounter a bug make sure to report it here.

Dept of Clients 📱

Extera

OfficialDakari announces

Hello again, users of the Matrix! It's been a week since last TWIM post and 2,5 months after first Extera commit! Anyway, here is what happened this week:

• More animations! Developer found out about Framer-motion and now puts animations everywhere. Jump to latest/unread buttons now slide into view instead of showing up instantly.
• Fixed pinned messages request spam. Now pinned messages window doesn't DoS the homeserver.
• Bubble layout improved again! Message timestamps are moved to the bottom of messages. Also added icon indicating message status. It even tells if someone has read the message!
• Redesigned emoji board and upload board. Upload board now looks like in Discord and more fits into Material UI.
• Rust Crypto. Extera now uses Rust crypto because of recently disclosed vulnerability.

Also, Extera's alt frontend for YT Music will be released very soon.

Best regards, Extera team developer

mautrix and gomuks updates

tulir reports

This month's bridge releases include the WhatsApp bridge upgrading to the Megabridge architecture as well as small bugfixes for other bridges.

In non-bridge news, a couple weeks ago I finally started writing my own web client, and now gomuks web is starting to be usable enough for chatting. At some point in the future, I'll migrate the gomuks terminal UI over to the new framework as well.

Read more at https://mau.fi/blog/2024-10-mautrix-release/

Fractal (website)

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Kévin Commaille says

It's time to experience La vie en rose! We just released Fractal 9.rc and to show our support 🩷 for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we decided to change the accent color to pink. And it is also packed with bug fixes, take a look for yourself:

• We used to only rely on the secrets provider to tell us which Matrix accounts are logged-in, which caused issues for people sharing their secrets between devices. Now we also make sure that there is a data folder for a given session before trying to restore it.
• Our notifications are categorized as coming from an instant messenger, so graphical shells that support it, such as Phosh, can play a sound for them.
• Some room settings are hidden for direct chats, because it does not make sense to change them in this type of room.
• The size of the headerbar would change depending on whether the room has a topic or not. This will not happen anymore.

As usual, this release includes other improvements, fixes and new translations thanks to all our contributors, and our upstream projects.

It is available to install via Flathub Beta, see the instructions in our README.

As the version implies, it should be mostly stable and we expect to only include minor improvements until the release of Fractal 9.

If you are wondering what to do on a rainy day, you can try to fix one of our newcomers issues. We are always looking for new contributors!

Ement.el (website)

Matrix client for Emacs

alphapapa announces

Ement.el, a Matrix client for the GNU Emacs text editor and Lisp environment, has been released at version 0.16. Changes since the last release include:

Compatibility

• Use authenticated media requests (part of Matrix 1.11; see MSC3916 and matrix.org's sunsetting unauthenticated media).

Additions

• When option ement-room-images is disabled (preventing automatic download and display of images), individual images may be shown by clicking the button in their events.

Changes

• Option ement-room-coalesce-events may now be set to (and defaults to) a maximum number of events to coalesce together. (This avoids potential performance problems in rare cases. See #247. Thanks to Arto Jantunen for reporting and Sergio Durigan Junior for testing.)

Fixes

• Replies to edited messages are correctly sent to the original event (whereas previously they were sent to the edit, which caused reactions to not be shown). (#230, #277. Thanks to Phil Sainty for suggesting, and to dionisos for reporting.)
• Set filter-buffer-substring-function in room buffers to prevent undesired text properties from being included in copied text. (#278. Thanks to Phil Sainty.)
• Command ement-disconnect no longer shows an error message. (#208.)
• Retrieval of earlier events in a just-joined room. (#148. Thanks to Richard Brežák for reporting, and to Phil Sainty for testing.)
• Cache computed displaynames in rooms (avoiding unnecessary reiteration and recalculation). (#298. Thanks to Rutherther for reporting and testing, and to Phil Sainty.)
• Customization group for options ement-room-mode-hook and ement-room-self-insert-mode. (Thanks to Phil Sainty.)
• Inheritance for some faces. (#303. Thanks to Jonas Bernoulli.)

Feel free to join us in the chat room: #ement.el:matrix.org!

Element X iOS (website)

A total rewrite of Element-iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 16+.

Mauro Romito says

• Made some good progress on the knock join rule implementation
• Some media upload optimisation were done client side to allow a more optimal media experience
• Fixed some bugs in particular a nasty one that did not allow images to be opened when sent from EXA
• The identity banner will now always show the user id to reduce ambiguity

Element X Android (website)

Android Matrix messenger application using the Matrix Rust SDK and Jetpack Compose.

benoit reports

• F-Droid release flow is now fixed, users should be able to upgrade to the latest version from this store.
• The identity banner will now always show the user id to reduce ambiguity
• Working on various features like room knock and incoming verification request.
• Fixing many bugs and polishing the app, in particular microphone lost when background-ing the app during a call on Android 14.
• We made some fixes for RTL languages, the app should be rendered correctly in this case (not released yet)

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

Rory&::MatrixUtils - General utility suite for Matrix

Emma [it/its] reports

Just a small change to better integrate with tools like communitybot

Changes:

• Added ability to create a new policy list directly (without relying on the broken room creator)
• Added a dedicated sidebar item to access and manage policy lists

Re: matrix.org: users on matrix.org can access LibMatrix & related rooms again!

The "first party" instance is available at https://mru.rory.gay, and is a clientside-only web app!

And, as with all of the other projects:

• The code is available at cgit.rory.gay!
  • All contributions are more than welcome, be it documentation, code, layout/UI/UX improvements, anything!
• Discussion, suggestions and ideas are welcome in #mru:rory.gay

Dept of Ops 🛠

synadm (website)

Command line admin tool for Synapse (Matrix homeserver)

jacksonchen666 (they/it) says

The documentation for synadm has been updated with 2 changes:

1. The most obvious theme change: You can see the new docs theme on https://synadm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ right now (compared to https://synadm.readthedocs.io/en/v0.46.1/)
2. There is now an API to CLI mapping page for synadm, linking to the Synapse Admin API docs and the synadm command that uses the linked Synapse Admin API. This is useful for seeing what's implemented and what's not, or if you forgot which command does what you want.

That's roughly all the big changes. We also want to thank everyone who has contributed so far, and at the same time welcome new contributors. The “API to CLI Mapping” docs chapter was created to give a clear overview of what synadm can do and what’s not yet implemented. Check it out, use it, come and join #synadm:peek-a-boo.at and help us make synadm better and more feature complete!

Dept of Services 🚀

etke.cc (website)

Your matrix server on your conditions

Aine [don't DM] announces

Synapse-Admin Updates

A while back, we at etke.cc announced our Synapse-Admin fork, and this week we're excited to share a single major update, but oh boy, if you use MAS you'd love it!

Login with Access Token is here 🎉

Yes, that's not a full MAS compatibility, but at least now you can generate a proper token using mas-cli and use it as-is, without odd quirks like blocking access to specific endpoints to modify the token.

Source code, admin.etke.cc (CDN version), already available in MDAD playbook

Matrix Federation Stats

Aine [don't DM] announces

collected by MatrixRooms.info - an MRS instance by etke.cc

As of today, 10219 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3143 (30.8%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 21159 rooms.

Stats timeline is available on MatrixRooms.info/stats

How to add your server | How to remove your server

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	tomfos.tr	188
2	conduwu.it	198.5
3	transgender.ing	214.5
4	bark.arf.wf	221
5	awawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawaw.gay	231
6	envs.net	264.5
7	mehren.cloud	276
8	nerdhouse.io	297
9	maunium.net	341.5
10	constellatory.net	358

That's all I know

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