Matrix Live - Wilko, creator of Pattle 🎙

This week I chatted to Wilko, creator of Pattle.

Dept of Servers 🏢

Synapse

Neil:

Folks, big news this week as we announce that Synapse v1.0 is scheduled for release on 10th June - read all about it here

Aside from that we shipped v0.99.5.1 which (hopefully) is the penultimate release ahead of v1.0. Please, everyone upgrade to v0.99.5.1 because it implements rooms v4 which will be the default room version in Synapse v1.0.

0.99.5.1 also contains experimental support for edits and reactions which are currently hidden behind a Riot labs flag.

Dendrite

Brendan:

Some activity has been happening this week in Dendrite-land, with Brendan adding support for Go modules to the project, and anoa adding SyTest runs to the project’s CI. These were two long-awaited maintenance works that will make working on Dendrite much easier in the future!

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

libQMatrixClient (that will soon become libQuotient) 0.5.2 has been released, with the sole purpose of fixing a nasty bug unmarking some direct chats when doing initial sync or a clean-cache start up. Everybody on 0.5.x branch is advised to upgrade.

Dept of Clients 📱

QMatrixClient to Quotient

kitsune:

The process of renaming QMatrixClient to Quotient has commenced - expect some turbulence while we're transitioning. The place for the repos is at https://github.com/quotient-im. Note that although the library repo name has changed, the old version of the library will continue releases under the old name (libQMatrixClient), and only in the master branch the library will be renamed. In most cases redirects should bring you home even if you request the old URL (thanks to GitHub); however, people with git repos are strongly advised to update their remotes to new URLs!

For platforms that don't have a separate libQMatrixClient package (that is, Windows, macOS, Flatpak and AppImage), Quaternion 0.0.9.4 has been rebuilt with libQMatrixClient 0.5.2 - in the form of Quaternion 0.0.9.4c release.

tangent

tanget is an embeddable HTML client from sanlox:

I added guest login, possibility to disable guest login, possibility to set own message limit on startup and various error messages. Cleaned up the code to make it more consistent and faster. Everthing I wanted to have for this tiny embeddable web chat is now there so I'd consider it finished for now.

Check it out at: https://sanlox.dev/tangent/

continuum

yuforia updated their JavaJX client:

minor changes in continuum this week:

• updated controlsfx to version 11, which has better modularization support
• sync issue indicator now uses NotificationPane from controlsfx, so now it has slide-in animation when it appears https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/VtPORWFqBamfnuJtPtgEXWBs

Neo now has image, video and general file sending

Fox:

Neo now supports sending multiple images, videos and files at once. You'll get a bar with previews, and the option to remove them from the queue/add more.
There's also been a bunch of changes to how events are handled. Images and videos should be much more robust against missing keys (no thumbnail, no information, etc), and there's basic displaying of the most common state events.
I also added an experimental media repository fallback option, which is disabled by default, and only implemented for room avatars. This allows you to provide a list of alternative homeservers Neo is allowed to try when your own homeserver can't load a piece of media.
Due to the loss of lain.haus, I lost admin access in the Neo room, so keep your eyes out for a new one when my infra is back.
I'm currently not really versioning anything, but I do push significant commits to https://neo.lain.haus/neo for people to try. Once it gets to a more useable state, I'll start adopting semantic versioning.

Spectral update

Black Hat:

You can now paste images from the clipboard in Spectral. It is also possible to change room name and topic in room settings. A new release is pushed to Flathub to address direct room issues. Also there've been discussions about implementing custom room themes and backgrounds.

Riot Web

• Continued work on reactions and edits
• New emoji font added to standardise emoji appearance and assist OS / browser combinations that don’t support emoji by default

Riot Mobile

• Continued work on reactions and edits
• Riot-iOS has a new actions menu on event
• Fix registration with an email

Riot and RiotX available from F-Droid

krombel updated their Riot(X) F-Droid repos:

I finally found some time to update my fdroid repos which provide the development builds of riot and riotx. Now the builds of buildkite are part of the repos.
There are now 4 separate repos: One for each app and flavor. You can have a look at https://fdroid.krombel.de to find out the URL for the version you want to use.

Riot-dev (F-Droid; Repo; Build-Source)
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riot-dev-fdroid
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riot-dev-fdroid/fdroid/repo
    Fingerprint: 312E07B9444D0D1B615EBBAAC55EA4E5A54E123C3BEFCCA5D18B5E12DFC95BDC

Riot-dev (GPlay; Repo; Build-Source)
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riot-dev-gplay
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riot-dev-gplay/fdroid/repo
    Fingerprint: 81EDF1741A51B944B00B55E307C7AA043623CB646599182A104B895B6B319844

RiotX-dev (F-Droid; Repo; Build-Source)
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riotx-dev-fdroid
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riotx-dev-fdroid/fdroid/repo
    Fingerprint: FD146EF30FA9F8F075BDCD9F02F069D22061B1DF7CC90E90821750A7184BF53D
RiotX-dev (GPlay; Repo; Build-Source)

    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riotx-dev-gplay
    https://fdroid.krombel.de/riotx-dev-gplay/fdroid/repo
    Fingerprint: 5564AB4D4BF9461AF7955449246F12D7E792A8D65165EBB2C0E90E65E77D5095

Dept of Bridges 🌉

Major WhatsApp bridging update

tulir made great strides on mautrix-whatsapp this week:

I've been working on mautrix-whatsapp to add history bridging and Matrix puppeting.

• New portals are populated with some history when creating them (exact count is configurable)
• All messages missed during bridge downtime are backfilled
• Creating portals is smarter now:
• When logging in initially, it'll create portals for a few recent chats (count configurable).
• It'll create portals when there are incoming messages as before, but it should no longer create portals for chats that only have old messages.
• The missed message backfilling creates portals when necessary.

Matrix puppeting isn't quite finished yet. It can already use your Matrix account to bridge messages sent from whatsapp mobile, but it doesn't use the account to bridge EDUs (typing notifs, presence, read receipts) yet.

To make the history bridging a bit nicer, I made a PR to fix timestamp massaging in synapse: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/5233. Timestamp massaging was removed from the spec in 1.0, but it wasn't intentionally removed from synapse, it just broke due to other changes. It was probably supposed to stay there as an easter egg until there's a proper solution for bridging history.

Dept of Ops 🛠

Ananace pushed updated K8s images for Synapse 0.99.5

Bubu updated synapse on Arch:

Archlinux updated to synapse 0.99.5 as well after the requests, urllib3 incomopatibility thing was sorted out.

Mathijs updated the synapse avhost docker image:

With synapse v 0.99.5.1 the avhost docker image has finally moved to python 3

Dept of Services 🚀

Modular

New widget for Scalar: EtherCalc.

Dept of Bots 🤖

QuatBot

Very very new, let's take a look at QuatBot, which uses libQuotient:

QuatBot is a simple meeting-management bot for use with the Matrix. Taking turns during an online meeting -- and making sure everyone gets to have their say -- takes a bit of organizing, and this bot helps you do that. QuatBot runs as a command-line application.

Dept of Articles 📝

uhoreg wrote a really informative article about key verification:

For those who want to know more about the security behind emoji-based key verification, I've written a blog post about it: https://www.uhoreg.ca/blog/20190514-1146

Dept of GSOC 🎓

GSoC 2019 – Reliable Bridges

Thanks Kai for this introduction to his project:

The Reliable Bridges GSoC project is about implementing a feedback mechanism for the Matrix network in cases where bridges are not able to properly handle messages. Currently clients are unable to know if a message was successfully sent over a bridge. With the new mechanism in place they get the information about errors happening at bridges and can behave accordingly by e.g. notify the user of the failed delivery.

The implementation is foremost focused on the matrix-appservice-dicord bridge which uses the underlying matrix-appservice-bridge. A JS bridge was chosen so that as much code as possible is brought into the SDK and other bridges can profit sooner from the work done.

The first step for implementing the new feature will be the signaling of permanent errors occurring at the bridge (in contrast to temporary failures). They might occur e.g. when the sending account was banned on the bridged foreign network. These permanent errors will be implemented as a new type of PDU originating from the bridge.

After permanent errors are done, the subsequent weeks will see work on temporary failures which might include work on Synapse as well as work on Riot Web to have a client which actually uses the new events. As these events are new features being introduced there will also be a MSC draft. There everyone can check out the proposed solution and tear it apart with their criticism (if applicable 😉).

For discussions related to the GSoC project or when you have some opinions on how the MSC should look like, you are invited to join the Reliable Bridges Matrix room.

That's all I know 🏁

Finally Alan, friend of Matrix and creator of TADHack and TADSummit is doing an "Open Source Telecom Software Survey" - if you could add value to this research by completing it please do so here: http://alanquayle.com/2019/05/open-source-telecom-software-project-survey/

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

Matrix Live - Reactions and Edits coming to Matrix

In Riot develop, hit Labs in the Settings menu and you'll be able to try out the new Reactions and message editing features.

Dept of Servers

Synapse

Neil said:

This week we shipped 0.99.4 - no stand out ‘oh my gosh’ headlines, just lot lot of bug fixes and perf improvements - get involved. We’ve also been working hard to getting things like reactions and edits going, as well more prep for improving perf for small server instances.

Construct

First Construct update for a few weeks:

Construct has added a server command line available in any room when starting a line with a special character (by default it's '\'). The commands are private so the room doesn't actually see it. More on this next week, or check out #test:zemos.net.

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks

Ruby SDK now 1.0!

Big news from Ananace this week:

Finished getting the test coverage to a reasonable enough percentage to feel comfortable releasing the Ruby Matrix SDK as a nice and stable 1.0 (.0)

This is great! All Rubyists should check it out. Ananace notes:

I still need to set up fixtures for all the API endpoints I'm exposing so I can verify every single API call as well, but I see that as a later thing as that relates mostly to how the other side (the HS) handles my input, not to how the SDK itself handles said input

Dept of Clients

Pattle

Wilko:

A new version of Pattle is available on F-droid!

Changes include:

• Implement direct chats correctly!
  • Use user user avatar as chat avatar if direct
  • Hide user name in direct chat
• Use names of room members if no room name is set (whether the chat is direct or not)
• Add border to left of replied-to messages to easily differentiate them
• Show redaction events!
• Use icons instead of letters if chat has no avatar
  • Use different icons for direct chats than group chats (and in the future public chats)
• Use user color for direct chats if the user has no avatar
• Simplify member change messages ('Pat has joined' -> 'Pat joined', etc)
• Tweak font sizes (thanks to Mathieu Velten)!
• Change date header style (smaller and full caps)

Development happens here and development discussion happens here: #pattle:matrix.org!

To install this release, add the following repo in F-droid:

https://fdroid.pattle.im/?fingerprint=E91F63CA6AE04F8E7EA53E52242EAF8779559209B8A342F152F9E7265E3EA729

And install 'Pattle'.

Riot (various)

This week the various Riot teams (web, iOS, Android) have been spending time implementing reactions/edits, but also:

Riot Android

• PR review from community: Matomo SDK will replace Piwik SDK
• Weblate is up again, a sync has been done.

RiotX (Android)

• Crypto integration is still ongoing
• Reactions are coming soon!
• New home and navigation to rooms development started

tangent

tangent is an exciting young project designed to create a very lightweight browser-based new client. sanlox:

did alot of changes on tangent to make it more stable and performant, only registration and guest login are left to do, git changed to https://gitlab.com/sanlox/tangent

Test the latest at: https://sanlox.dev/tangent/

Spectral timeline UI and more

Black Hat:

• Polished the timeline UI for Spectral.
• Added m.video support.
• Also added drag-and-drop support in Spectral.

Fractal now with keyboard shortcuts

Alexandre Franke:

Ana, first time contributor, added a bunch of cool keyboard shortcuts to ease navigation in Fractal. One can now e.g. go down to the next room with unread messages with ctrl+shift+page down.

continuum updates

yuforia:

• Load message history from server lazily when scrolling
• Loaded messages are always saved to disk, so if you aren't offline for too long, only a few messages will need to be fetched the next time you login
• The screenshot also shows the UI for handling invitations

early-day reactions support in Quaternion

kitsune:

This week was too packed IRL but I took an hour to experiment with reactions that are a rage in riot.im/develop these days. An experimental "kitsune-reactions" branch understands reaction events and allows clients to further process them. A proof-of-concept in Quaternion will land over the weekend.

Scylla

via Aaron Raimist:

Update on Scylla from VaNilLa: Though I am very busy with schoolwork, I found time to fix a long-standing issue: the names of private messages showing up as <No Name>. this is gone now, and rooms are sorted alphabetically to make it easier to navigate.
Try Scylla here: https://scylla.danilafe.com
Come join us in #scylla:riot.danilafe.com to discuss

Dept of Bridges

matrix-appservice-discord 0.5.0

Half-Shot:

Evening, we've just cut the first RC of matrix-appservice-discord 0.5.0. Most of the changes this time around are bugfixes to formatting, internal re-architecturing / performance boosts and shifting more things to the database. Please help test if you run an instance, so we can get a 0.5.0 out swiftly. The next release has a lot of features planned for it 😉

Also - congratulations to Half-Shot on finishing all his final-year exams! How will you fill your time now?

mautrix-telegram/mautrix-hangouts/mautrix-facebook/mautrix-whatsapp

Think tulir's been busy this week?

Lots of small changes in my projects:

• mautrix-telegram had a bunch of bugs fixed, like multiline messages from some clients not being bridged correctly.
• mautrix-hangouts got matrix->hangouts image bridging and some bugfixes.
• mautrix-facebook also got some bugfixes.
• mautrix-whatsapp now informs the user about connection problems rather than crashing and has commands to try to reconnect. It also now bridges redactions in both directions.

Dept of Ops

kubernetes from Ananace

Ananace updated their k8s packaging for Synapse to 0.99.4: https://github.com/ananace/matrix-synapse

Debian Packages

andrewsh announced the Debian Matrix Packagers Team has its own dedicated blog

for everything about Matrix on Debian, join #debian-matrix:matrix.org

silvio/avhost synapse docker container

Mathijs:

the silvio/avhost synapse docker container is making progress in moving to python 3, the container is made smaller and no longer runs synapse as root

There are some important differences between this and https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tree/master/contrib/docker:

it puts all the configuration files, logfiles and media files in the volume, you don't really configure it with environmental variables but just by editing the homeserver.yaml file in the volume, and it also contains coturn

Dept of Bots

Half-Shot created a "reactbot":

Hot on the heels of the rapid developments of the reaction work, I've written a bot that automatically reacts when spotting certain phrases inside rooms. Honestly I have no idea what the use case is for this, but it exists and I currently use it to stick the :dog: reaction on every dog related event. https://github.com/Half-Shot/matrix-reactbot

The bot is also now used in #twim:matrix.org, whhere it performs the needed work of adding red circles to submissions.

tulir's karma maubot now also supports reactions and redactions, and the maubot sed plugin now underlines changes in messages.

Dept of Status of Matrix

t2bot.io has launched a new website

TravisR:

t2bot.io has launched a new website, surpassed a milestone of 300k total bridged users (70k of those are active monthly), and launched 2 new early-beta-quality bridges. If you're looking to try out tulir's latest Hangouts or Facebook Messenger bridge then t2bot.io is an option for that, assuming you don't mind the occasional bug, missing feature, or problem. Check out https://t2bot.io/hangouts/ and https://t2bot.io/messenger/ for setup instructions.

That's all I know

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

PS Massive thanks to Aaron Raimist for doing the needful to make full articles appear in RSS!

Matrix Live

This week Neil and Matthew are talking about recent security issues - this is a really long and detailed chat, but you can skip to around the 32 minute mark to hear about other news - including progress on reactions. Reminder that for a good "big picture" overview of the progress of Matrix, you can look at the Homeserver High Level Roadmap.

Dept of Servers

Synapse

Neil, Synapse-dev wrangler:

Reactions continues at full speed, we have a draft PR and will be implementing over the coming week. The ability to blacklist IPs over federation will land imminently, as well as a nasty device management bug that led to a spate of E2E errors. Next week is all about Reactions, resuming work on the small homeserver project and finally getting back to Synapse 1.0 blockers following all the remediation drama of the past few weeks. With any luck we’ll have a new Synapse release for you next week.

Dept of Encryption

Pantalaimon

Says poljar:

• Pantalaimon received a configuration file. The configuration file adds the ability to configure multiple Homeservers and pantalaimon will run having each Homeserver exposed on a different TCP port.
• The panctl utility has received support for more commands, it now has the ability to accept SAS requests, confirm them, import/export keys, list pan users as well as list devices of users. Completions for the commands were also added.

Dept of Clients

Pattle - big update!

Wilko announced:

A new version of Pattle is available on F-droid!

Lots of changes again, including:

• Render HTML formatting in messages!
• Replies are now rendered!
• Show date headers between messages of different days!
• Render usernames with a color in chat timeline
• Add loading indicators (when logging in, loading chats, etc.)
• Show error banner at the top if syncing failed
• Syncing now resumes after a failed attempt (no more restarting)
• Fix messages not being sent if connection was lost and the app restarted

To install Pattle, add the following repo in F-droid:

https://fdroid.pattle.im/?fingerprint=E91F63CA6AE04F8E7EA53E52242EAF8779559209B8A342F152F9E7265E3EA729

Follow development here and in #pattle:matrix.org!

Fractal

Alexandre Franke:

Although the development pace has been reduced lately, the Fractal team managed to make significant progress towards the 4.2 release. More specifically since our previous news, Chris has landed much of his adaptive view work to get Fractal in a mobile friendly state so it’s ready to run on the Librem 5 once Purism starts shipping them. But he didn’t stop there: eager to see his awesome work in the hands of many people (figuratively, the literal application will have to wait for the phone to be out 😛) as soon as possible, he tackled a few bugs that we really wanted to get sorted out before we got a new version out.

Alexandre also prepared the changelog with a bird’s-eye view of all changes that happened since 4.0.

Last but not least, we had a few external contributions for features such as network proxy support and typing notifications.

Riot Web

Progress on message composer for editing messages.

Riot iOS

• 0.8.6 has been released on Tuesday
• We are working on reactions

Riot Android

• We have fixed some minor bugs, our efforts are now on RiotX
• New FDroid mode support for high service level, regardless of battery usage.

RiotX (Android)

• Benoit has started to implement the crypto on RiotX. Basically all the legacy has been imported and a migration to the new architecture is done. Lots of plumbing and rework, but it should be the fastest way to support crypto on RiotX.
• Valere is working on the emoji picker and reactions, and has also added some actions on events (copy, share, view source, etc.)
• François has added room invitation support. It will be possible soon to see invitations, and accept or reject them.

continuum

yuforia has news on continuum, a JavaFX-based client.

this week in continuum

• right-click on a room in the room list to send invitations
• experimental support for receiving invitations
• membership data are now also persisted in database

FluffyChat available as a Snap package, plus E2EE progress

Krille announced FluffyChat for Linux desktops:

FluffyChat is now also available as a Snap package for desktop Linux
https://snapcraft.io/fluffychat :D
It's a Matrix client written in Qml for Ubuntu Phones. Now it is working for Linux Desktop too.

He also has news to share re E2E:

Progress has been made at the end2end encryption for FluffyChat. Qml bindings for the libolm library are mostly ready and the app can now create keys and upload keys to the server. Device tracking is now implemented too.

E2E when? SOON! See the branch here: https://gitlab.com/ChristianPauly/fluffychat/tree/e2eencryption

Dept of Bridges

New Hangouts bridge from tulir / mautrix

tulir has been using his mautrix-python lib, which was recently used to enable his mautrix-facebook bridge, to bring a new method for Matrix-Hangouts bridging:

New bridge again, this time it's Hangouts: https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-hangouts / #hangouts:maunium.net. As with the Messenger bridge, currently the main difference to matrix-puppet-hangouts is multi-user support (also no hacky JS/Python mixing).

Before making mautrix-hangouts, I put a bunch of the generic bridging parts of mautrix-facebook into mautrix-python's bridge module and used that in both bridges. After Debian 10 is released, I'll drop Python 3.5 compatibility in mautrix-telegram and move it to use mautrix-python and the bridge module too.

Next week I'm planning on adding a bunch of features to both my new bridges, such as bridging formatting and remaining media types (so no new bridges planned for now :D).

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks

QMatrixClient is now "Quotient"

kitsune:

The vote on a new name for the QMatrixClient project has been going on over the past week.
We have a winner now, and the new name is "Quotient"! In the nearest weeks, expect changes in the library code (it's going to be libQuotient from the next release), room aliases (already ongoing), links to the repos etc. etc. Where possible, we're going to smoothen the migration path by providing legacy fallbacks (e.g., the new C++ namespace, Quotient, will be introduced but the old one, QMatrixClient, will stay its synonym, although deprecated).
Just in case you missed all the previous mentions of the topic - it's only related to the overall project and the library, but not the client - its name remains Quaternion.

Why rename?

Because the previous name has been a bit clumsy and, most importantly, the project is no more focusing just on client-side but on a wider set of applications of Matrix (no homeserver in plans though). See also the recent backlog of #qmatrixclient:matrix.org (now also #quotient:matrix.org) earlier this week for the whole discussion

Ruby Matrix SDK hits v0.1.0

Ananace:

Just published version 0.1.0 of the Ruby Matrix SDK, and I've gotten enough testing written now where I feel comfortable not marking this as a pre-production release. So feel free to integrate it into more than just prototypes and experiments. 😃
Relevant links; GitHub page, #ruby-matrix-sdk:kittenface.studio.

Opsdroid big updates, with focus on Matrix

Cadair:

Opsdroid 0.15 has been released, with a lot of matrix focused updates. The biggest of which is support for sending and receiving images and files. There have also been a bunch of bug fixes such as clean exit of the matrix connector and correct handling of events which are not parsed. There are also a bunch of other not matrix specific changes like support for the awesome parse library for string matching. Read all about it in the release blog: https://medium.com/opsdroid/event-dispatching-simple-parsing-and-more-in-v0-15-3f721b8a6d6c

PK interfaces for ruby_olm

Willem:

This week I've been adding PK interfaces to cjhdev's Ruby bindings for Olm, in preparation of improving my Tchap proxy. The PK interfaces can be found in my fork of ruby_olm. Building the native extensions for the gem has had a major overhaul, so no pull request yet.

Dept of Ops

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy update

It's been a few weeks since we heard from Slavi about matrix-docker-ansible-deploy, but he's been working away on it:

We haven't shared any matrix-docker-ansible-deploy updates lately, but we've had lots of community contributions.

Most of it has been bug fixes and various internal improvements, but we've also landed a few large features. Here's what's most interesting lately:

• Facebook bridging support via mautrix-facebook
• Support for mxisd-controlled user Registration
• Examples for how to use a Caddy webserver instead of the integrated nginx webserver
• Goofys support for other S3-compatible object stores

Dept of Status of Matrix

jaywink, maintainer of https://the-federation.info, told us what we all know to be true: Matrix is great and is getting more popular:

Matrix (Synapse) jumps to second place in https://the-federation.info site, which lists servers of the federated social web. Help us map the true size of the Matrixverse by adding your server by going a https://the-federation.info/register/yourdomain.tld. Note, SRV and well-known lookups not yet working, so registration needs to happen with the Matrix server real domain (and port if any).

That's all I know

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

PS to people who would normally be reading this in their own RSS reader - I apologise, we'll get the full-article feed back up soon.

New matrix.org Security Disclosure Policy and moderation pages

Check out the Matrix Official Security Disclosure Policy, which also features a "Hall of Fame": https://matrix.org/security-disclosure-policy/

We also have an official moderation guide now at https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation

Servers

Synapse

Last week

Work progresses on reactions support, expect a more formal MSC rsn, but for check out https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc1849/proposals/1849-aggregations.md for more details. Aside from that we now have an API to send server notices, support is coming for blacklisting IP ranges for federation traffic and finally we published a security disclosure policy and hall of fame https://matrix.org/security-disclosure-policy/. We’ve also been tracking down some device management bugs that prevent e2e message decryption as well as fixing some security bugs.

Next week

More reactions work, device management bug hunting and server key validity support.

Crypto

• Olm 3.1.2 bugfix release.
• Pantalaimon: Initial SAS support through panctl http://webmshare.com/play/QeBY1
• Pantalaimon: Support for sending out key requests.

Clients

There are some BIG (capital and bold!) client releases this week, let's take a look

Quaternion 0.0.9.4

Big release for Quaternion this week, following lots of work on libQMatrixClient. kitsune reports that:

Quaternion is now officially at version 0.0.9.4! Optional native scrollbar for the timeline, files uploading, initial support of matrix.to links (the foundation for future Matrix URIs), first complete translations, and much much more - the long list is here: https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion/releases/tag/0.0.9.4. Packagers are advised to take a look at the building and packaging section of the release notes: there are a few updates for you there.

Spectral

Continuing the QT-client theme, Black Hat has released a new version of Spectral to FlatHub, join #spectral:matrix.org for more:

A new version of Spectral is released on Flathub this week! The last release is half a year ago, and there are a lot of changes since then, including a better UI, bug fixes and performance improvements.

Changelog:

Increase minimum Qt version to 5.12.
Redesigned UI.
Emoji and username auto completion in text input.
Respect server-side notification settings.
Emoji picker.
Fix font size in HiDPI.
Improved reply UI/UX and rich reply UI.
Sending/receiving typing notifications.
Switch to hoedown for parsing markdown.
Display notification count.
Responsive UI.
Fix #2(Room/People separator issue).
Infer device name from system information.
Image caching.

And of course various performance improvements. For my account Spectral takes ~35MB RAM initially, compared to 45~50MB before.

Pattle new release

Wilko came to announce a new Pattle release, that's the Flutter client:

A new release of Pattle has been pushed to F-droid! Lots of different changes this release, including:

• Viewing images!
• Actual local echo (message is immediately placed in the timeline)
• Sent state indicators are now shown next to the message time (clock for still being sent and a checkmark for sent)
• Show member change events! (x has joined, left, invited, etc)
• Thumbnails are now used for chat avatars, which should improve performance a bit
• Other small fixes :)

Check out a video demo at here.

continuum

yuforia reports that:

This week in continuum:

• Remove support for embedded webview and open external browsers when necessary instead. Many users actually prefer it this way. And dependency on a fairly large native module is gone.
• Improvements on the emoji input. Removed some style classes and tweaked some sizes to make the appearance more compact and flat. https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/PvFFPAvoDhiHghsyeJnWVyAK

Riot Web

Initial UI work on reactions and editing, nothing useable yet though.

Riot iOS

• Release of 0.8.5 :
  • Grouped notifications
  • Interactive device verification (by emoji)
  • WebRTC and Jitsi libs updates
  • min iOS version is now 10 (Jitsi constraints)
• Initial UI work on reactions, nothing useable yet though.

Riot Android

Benoit from the Riot team:

• CI has been configured on Buildkite for the Android matrix sdk, riot and riotx.
• The Android sdk can now be integrate as a grate dependency via Jitpack.
• Riot 0.9.1 has been released with sas feature included! Device verification is easier with riot web and riot Android users, soon with riot ios users. Will be on production channel on Monday.
• We have finally pushed the security fix on GH.
• Also working on the crypto modularization to integrate it on RiotX.
• We will concentrate our effort on RiotX now

RiotX (Android)

• Working on reactions

Bridges

matrix-appservice-discord searching for a new maintainer

Sorunome reports that:

We (matrix-appservice-discord) are looking for a new maintainer!

What are we looking for in a maintainer?
You wouldn't have to be super active, however a few minutes per day would be greatly appreciated. You'd be responsible of reviewing PRs! Because of this not being afraid of Typescript and not being afraid of Discord is required - no need to be at pro-level!

So we are basically looking for someone who can help us look over PRs and maybe do some themself. If you think you are interested, please message us in our matrix room!

Bridging Facebook Messenger

tulir:

I made a new Facebook Messenger bridge: https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-facebook / #facebook:maunium.net. Currently the main difference to matrix-puppet-facebook is multi-user support like my WhatsApp and Telegram bridges. The bridge is Python and the code structure is similar to mautrix-telegram, so I'll probably eventually create a generic bridge library out of the common parts.

SDKs and Frameworks

Ruby SDK

Ananace reports that:

Working on the Ruby SDK again, planning to try and get it to the point where I feel comfortable calling it a provisionary 1.0 release. I want to propose additions to various softwares using it after all, and that tends to look better if it's 1.0 - or close. 😃

That's all I know

That's all for this week folks, come chat in #twim:matrix.org for more, or to share what you've been working on.

PS this interesting-looking project is not ready for public eyes on it yet, so please refrain from checking out the code and discussing with the author in #tangent:matrix.org

Hello and welcome

No Ben this week. I'm afraid this means no matrix live, but fear not your Ben orientated programming will resume next week.

Things that have happened

Riot Android

• New Riot.im application has been delivered to the PlayStore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app. It replaces the previous app. More details here: https://medium.com/@RiotChat/riot-im-android-security-update-2b3f655ad739
• François and Benoit were at AndroidMakers Paris on Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ve seen plenty of interesting conferences and come back with many ideas to improve Riot UX/UI/Implementation/testing/etc.
• SAS device verification review is over, will be merged once we have the tagged OLM library.

RiotX (Android)

• Valere has started working on reactions (which will be implemented only on RiotX for Android).
• François has worked on merging membership Events in the timeline

Riot iOS

• Interactive device verification has been merged
• Jitsi and WebRTC updates have been merged
• Fix bugs in order to prepare a release

Crypto

uhoreg reports that:

olm 3.1.0 has been released. This release adds new functions to help with SAS-based key verification (a.k.a. emoji-based verification) and with cross-signing. The Python bindings are also now available on pypi, so you can install it using "pip install python-olm", though you need the olm library and development files installed first.

Also

• Python-olm available on pypi.
• Initial SAS verification support for nio.

Spectral

Black Hat reports that:

Spectral's redesign continues, featuring a beautiful responsive UI(not kirigami yet, sorry) and more functionalities. Legacy UIs such as the room detail panel are changed to fit into redesigned UI better. Basic room upgrade support is added, allowing you to switch between the old room and the new room. Room settings and user detail dialogs are added. You can also ignore users in the user detail dialog.

matrix-nsfw

A Black Hat double header this week:

matrix-nsfw has been ported from Golang to Rust. The backend machine learning framework is also switched to Tensorflow, giving a major performance boost. For anyone that doesn't know what matrix-nsfw is, it is a bot-like utility that detects NSFW images in a room. The new repo is at https://gitlab.com/b0/matrix-nsfw-rust

Neo

Sometimes a picture tells a thousands rainbow coloured words. Thanks Foks

Ruma

Jimmy reports that:

All of Ruma's libraries (but not yet the homeserver itself) are now targeting stable Rust!

Continiuum

yuforia reports that:

• If a room member is not visible on screen, updating their name doesn't require switching to the main UI thread
• Apply formatting when viewing the json source of an event
• Reuse GUI components to improve performance, update content of views instead of creating new ones
• Use a hash set to avoid going through the list of room members in some cases * Move more of local storage into the database: names and avatars of users and rooms, room membership, recently used accounts, etc.
• Placeholder avatars are made with GUI components and instead of generated bitmap images
• Switch to gradle multi-project build to modularize

After switching from plaintext files to an embedded database, some components are still in the process of being rewritten, coming next week: load messages from server on demand when scrolling, if they are not yet stored in database; add support for invitations;

matrix-appservice-discord

Sorunome reports that:

matrix-appservice-discord work has finally resumed! The PRs for both migrating the room and user store to SQL have been merged, and many awesome new things should follow up soon!

Synapse

The reactions and edits API is taking shape, we’re making progress on our small homeserver setup, and we’re hunting a new set of device key management bugs that came to light in the absence of matrix.org.

We’ve been a bit disrupted these past few weeks, but work towards Synapse 1.0 continues and we’ll soon be ready to offer a release candidate.

miniVector

Curious Cat reports that:

miniVector 0.8.29 is available on Goldy and Froid (and are unaffected by the Riot/Android re-release drama).

The 'Incident'

We know you'll have a bunch of questions, we'll be publishing a full post-mortem next week. Thanks for bearing with us.

The End

See you next week, it will be Bentastic I can assure you. Be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!

Welcome to the new blog!

Check out the new digs! We're happy with this newly deployed blog, and all the old and loveable content is right down there. If you find issues, let me know. You may remember Nad, from previous editions of Matrix Live - huge thanks to him for his work on the design and upkeep of this new deployment.

Notes from the downtimes

Github tokens

jaywink:

Due to the security incident, all GitHub access tokens for the Scalar GitHub integration were cleared. This means that if you have a GitHub bot in the channel and want to use the !github bot commands, you need to re-login to github via the integration manager menu. Note, existing webhooks are untouched and should work fine without re-authenticating.

Bridges

Half-Shot:

From the matrix.org bridge team, we are ressurecting bridges as fast as possible. Currently running are the freenode, slack, gitter and gimpnet (now hosted on gnome.org) with more to come today and next week.
We have the snoonet and oftc irc bridges back. Mozilla is coming soon hopefully this weekend too!

Whoop! Mozilla is actually up now!

Pattle new release on F-Droid

Wilko:

A big release of Pattle has just been pushed to the F-droid repo! Changes include:

• Display names are now shown
• You can now click on chats and view them!
• Messages are grouped by time and sender (see screenshots)
• Add fancy transition animation and ripples to chat messages (see video)
• Use Sentry for error reporting (only Android version and device model is sent, along with the stacktrace of the error)

Also, please note that if you have a matrix.org you probably have reinstall the app if you're logged in because of the recent matrix.org incident (because there's no logout button yet and no detection for invalidated access tokens)

There has actually been a release since, which includes:

message sending and viewing image history!

libQMatrixClient 0.5.1.2 && Quaternion 0.0.9.4

kitsune is talking about the long road to 0.0.9.4:

libQMatrixClient 0.5.1.2 has been released, with all the remaining bugfixes for Quaternion 0.0.9.4 that's coming any day soon now. The release notes are here: https://github.com/QMatrixClient/libqmatrixclient/releases/tag/0.5.1.2

Quaternion 0.0.9.4 RC3, the last one before the release that will happen in the nearest days, is out. Release notes can be found at https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion/releases/tag/0.0.9.4-rc3. Translators, you literally have hours to add your translations for 0.0.9.4!

neo

I reimplemented the matrix sdk into Neo, so it works nicer. Colors and font look nicer (base16-tomorrow, Open Sans), and there's text message sending, with localecho!
I also fixed a bug where react would recycle displayname-components across rooms, attributing them to the wrong messages

a video at https://lain.haus/_matrix/media/v1/download/lain.haus/VfshWRfaNUnpGQbdkyYczxvd

Go test Neo at: https://neo.lain.haus/neo

matrix-registration update

ZerataX:

it's been a long while, but I've finally come around to improving on matrix-registration
For those of you, who have forgotten what this project is about, it basically lets you invite people to your homeserver with tokens, e.g. https://homeserver.tld/register?token=DoubleWizardSky
This whole update was about making the project more user friendly.
I made a new default registration page that requires 0 setup and you can install the project right from pypi with pip, so you don't even need to clone the repo any longer.
check a live example here: https://chat.dmnd.sh/register
and to play around with the api you can can go over to the github page: https://zeratax.github.io/matrix-registration/demo.html?token=ColorWhiskeyExpand
channel: #matrix-registration:dmnd.sh
github: https://github.com/zeratax/matrix-registration

Video available here.

matrix-media-repo now has s3 support

TravisR:

matrix-media-repo now has s3 (and s3-like) support, making it easier to archive older media or use minimal disk space. See the new datastores option in the config and the admin docs ( https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-media-repo/blob/master/docs/admin.md#datastore-management ) for more information.

Dimension

TravisR:

Dimension has been updated to more safely handle when upstream integration managers (like Scalar) are offline. Instead of crashing or breaking in various ways, it'll report which integrations are not accessible.
As well, due to recent events, if you use matrix.org bots or bridges in Dimension then go the the admin section and log everyone out using the red button. Dimension caches upstream tokens and isn't smart enough to realize that they are no longer valid, which means they need clearing. Clients should automatically handle getting new tokens in the background.

Riot iOS

• Interactive device verification is still in progress
• Update WebRTC and Jitsi libs (in progress)

Riot Android

We are finalizing SAS device verification feature We are preparing a release to fix some issues

RiotX (Android)

• We can now clear the cache of the application (Riot legacy feature)
• Sync filter has been implemented
• François is working on thumbnail of video (upload and preview) in the timeline

That's all I know

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

Matrix Live S3E20 FluffyChat creator Krille on Matrix, Ubuntu Touch and Matrix-for-Healthcare

Synapse, the road to 1.0

Last week we carried on with Synapse 1.0 work, in particular server key signing validity, a config option to verify federation certificates to support MSC1711 and support for 3PID unbinding APIs (MSC1915). Outside of that we've been thinking about how to improve room upgrades for private rooms and landed the preparatory work for a refactor of the room directory.

Coming up next, we'll continue to bash out 1.0 blockers, Hawkowl has started work on optimising for small hosted homeservers, and anoa will be working on the new super fast room directory. Finally Erik has started work on aggregations support so clients will be able to offer things like edits and reactions ?

https://www.arewereadyyet.com/ is now just shy of 64%, keep going.

Dendrite

Dockerfile for sytest running against Dendrite approved. Close to being able to run Dendrite against sytest. Also using sytest's new test white/blacklist functionality to include a list of tests that Dendrite is known to pass in the repo. When people make new PRs that allow Dendrite to pass new tests, they can also append the names of the tests to the testfile to help automatically track Dendrite's improving progress. Look forward to seeing further progress post Synapse 1.0.

libQMatrixClient 0.5.1 released,

libQMatrixClient 0.5.1 is out! This is a minor release with bugfixes and small improvements, a base for Quaternion 0.0.9.4, RC of which is coming this weekend. Full release notes here

Quaternion 0.0.9.4 Release Candidate is available for all those who don't need a "release" seal of approval to use applications. Get out, grab it, report bugs that could still sneak in: https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion/releases/tag/0.0.9.4-rc. A separate call out to translators - it's a great moment to teach Quaternion a few more phrases in your language!

.NET Core Synchrotron

This weekend I took a brief pause from doing matrix work, and then went back into it by finishing the feature set for the .NET Core Synchrotron. It's "feature complete" meaning all specced features of sync are in this branch, excluding legacy endpoints. There are a few bugs logged against it and it's really only useful as a super early test, while I fix some of the p1 bugs.

The federation sender continues to be reliable and stable, and we are prepping for the release of synapse 0.99.3 which made a few changes to the replication stream. For more info, please see https://github.com/turt2live/synapse-netcore-workers

Pattle has now moved to Flutter

After some silence here but a lot of development, Pattle has now moved to Flutter. The new app is available in the same F-droid repository, you can just update. Note that you will have to log in again. If there are issues with updating, try removing the old app and installing the new one.

Also note that this version is still very basic and does not have all features of the old Pattle unfortunately. The reason that I chose to already replace it on the repo is that the old app will not receive updates anymore.

The current features are logging in and an overview of all chats. What is new is that data is now stored locally, so you won't have to do an initial sync everytime you open the app (which was the case with old app). What's also new is that I've decided to use more red, because.. I like red.

There is still a lot to do! Please notifiy me of anything that you think is missing, even though some things may be obvious (sorting chats based on date, chat avatars), some may not be as obvious to me!

If you'd like to contribute, the new repo is here. Note that many contributions will probably start at the SDK level. Pattle uses my own Dart SDK, which you can find here.

There is at the moment a very specific bug in Flutter, where on Android 7.1 with release builds, the app crashes when building a list widget. If you use Android 7.1 (like me) and you crash after logging in, that's the reason. It seems I can't do anything about it, sorry.

libaqueous (Matrix Dart SDK) and Aqueous client

Aqueous now comes with room categories and history messages support. Also, a lot of code refactoring is going on to change the backend store from plain json file to sqlite, which should improve the performance a lot. The room is at #libaqueous:encom.eu.org

Riot Web

• Working towards bringing breadcrumbs out of labs
• Adding image preview to file upload UX
• Stability fixes for timeline
• Defending against issues introduced when using Riot Web on a machine which is running out of disk space

Riot iOS

• Grouped notifications are coming! We have added some logs to track why the notification setting is sometimes disables (#2348).
• SAS device verification is still in progress but it should be released next week.

Riot Android

• Three releases this week, to fix several bugs with the new EventStreamServiceX, and to fix issue with the Jitsi conference call (Riot.im 0.8.29). FDroid users should receive the upgrade soon.
• Users are happy with the new notifications!
• Valere is still working on SAS, we are reaching the end :).

RiotX (Android)

• It's now possible to signout from RiotX.
• The whole setting screen has been imported from Riot, as well as the Themes and some other small features (launcher icon, etc.).
• Benoit is working on room creation, sdk side, and François is working on image upload.
• We should start to integrate new design from Nad next week.

continuum (JavaFX desktop client)

in continuum, moving storage of messages from plain text files to a database, simplifying code and improving performance

neo

Neo now has .well-known implemented for login :D
video showcasing the different outcomes:

Synapse K8s images

I'll be writing a Helm chart for 1.0 as well, just haven't had time to do so yet.
I need to update all the references to TLS as well, as that's supposed to be left to kube-lego or cert-manager for a modern install

Federation Tester

Following up on last week's effort, a number of issues on the Matrix federation tester, both on the backend and the frontend side, have been fixed, including fixing certificate validity checks, not following CNAME records in SRV records, fixing display of the SRV lookup in the UI, preventing some crashes, and a few more.

All outstanding issues on both the federation tester's backend and its frontend that could have preventing people to test efficiently how their server is performing in the context of Synapse's 1.0 release have now been fixed and deployed on https://matrix.org/federationtester/.

Synapse and Riot bounties

A few bounties have been added to Synapse and Riot recently to encourage community memebers to work on those projects. Although they aren't large enough to actually pay for development, I believe they can serve as a small push to help an already interested developer justify spending some time working on these projects.

• $400 bounty on threading in Riot thanks to GitHub user @fallerOfFalls, expires November 21, 2019
• $200 bounty to fixing stuck invites, expires on January 1, 2020
• $200 bounty to fix Riot forgetting the name of rooms, AKA the "Aaron and 5246 others" bug, expires on January 1, 2020

Still more

jj announced a new Python SDK for Matrix:

new, alpha quality, matrix python client for asyncio and with support for e2e encryption: https://github.com/SFTtech/aiomatrix
Polishing is needed but the basics do work already :)

Matrix listed as one of the "Top Ten Tools" for Open Science practitioners

the whole point of Matrix is that its a protocol which many different suppliers can use so you can avoid nasty lock ins

That's all I know

Matrix Live

Matrix.org homeserver notice

Synapse

We have much improved sytest support for Synapse worker mode, Hawkowl landed a brand new super fast super shiny user directory implementation, Brendan fixed a bunch of niggles in the federation tester and we finally got to the bottom of our sync caching bug that obscured accepting invites (thanks richvdh for sticking with it). Erik solved our presence spamming bug and anoa fixed some LDAP auth bugs and submitted a PR for certificate checking - one of our final blockers for Synapse 1.0. For all the latest checkout out our latest release candidate 0.99.3rc1.
Next week, we'll ship 0.99.3, we'll be looking at server key validity periods, adding a 3PID unbind API and starting work on tuning low powered Synapse installations.
https://www.arewereadyyet.com/ is still rising so keep banging to everyone you know that they ensure their federation certificates are valid.

Pantalaimon

Pantalaimon is a new project that acts as a reverse proxy for clients to connect to. Once a client is connected Pantalaimon handles end to end encryption for the client transparently.
The project is only a week old but already at a working prototype phase. A demo can be found here: http://webmshare.com/play/Qn4wg

This is a huge gain! Use of this project, as you will see in the video, permits any Matrix client to support End-to-End encryption of messages, by handling encryption/decryption in a daemon rather than in the client.

Watch the video, and you'll see gomuks, which does not support encryption, chatting in an encrypted room. Also, go chat in #pantalaimon:matrix.org and get involved!

Construct

The matrix Construct server has made significant progress this week implementing the 1.0 specification and is very close to a 1.0 release! Special thanks to our star tester Yan Minari and expert Matrix consultants Tulir and Max and C++ developers Jason of Zemos and Mujx of nheko for all their hard work to make this happen. The Construct now fully supports IPv6 and is ready to participate in fully end-to-to-end encrypted ipv6 networks like #yggdrasil:matrix.org and #cjdns:matrix.org.
This week also saw additions for .well-known support, m.fully_read and even DNS caching inside a matrix room shared between servers (which is really cool if you ask me).

I'd like to recognize our testers for their invaluable contributions this week, only a fraction of which are documented here: https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct/issues leading to the 1.0 release.

The Construct is written in C++ for maximum performance and scalability. It is the first fully federating server after the Synapse reference implementation. Your contributions in code and participation are essential to bring Construct to its upcoming release; get involved at https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct and in #zemos-test:matrix.org.

Riot Web

We've been upgrading and optimising our Jitsi instance so people should see more reliable video conference calls, especially if they avoid connecting from Firefox over poor connections.
We've been squashing scroll jumps (where the timeline pops out of position unexpectedly due to images loading, etc.). We've come up with a radical reimplementation of the timeline (which should be imperceptible, except it doesn't jump) - try it out on https://riot.im/develop now.

You can now get all Riot updates from #riot-web-announcements:matrix.org, the official room of Riot web announcements! You can especially get this update, which was also featured on Twitter:

Attention Riot Web Admins! We reset Scalar tokens to address a potential security vuln. with some clients - if you run your own Riot instance please upgrade to at least v1.0.4 to keep using integrations (widgets, sticker picker, any bots and bridges configured through Scalar).

— Riot.im (@RiotChat) March 27, 2019

Please upgrade your Riot web instances!

Additionally, Notkea has packaged Riot desktop for NixOS.

Riot iOS

Another case of UTD (https://github.com/vector-im/riot-ios/issues/2320) has been fixed. Some logs have been added to track push notifications that disabled themselves. SAS verification implementation is still in progress.

Riot Android

• Rework of EventStreamService, to fix many issues (crash) reported by users. The feature is available on the develop branch.
• Also we are trying to upgrade Jitsi library, to fix other errors reported by users.
• SAS verification implementation is still in progress.

RiotX (Android)

• Phase 1 started!
• Backporting RageShake feature, with better handshake detection.
• We are still fighting bug on the timeline rendering.

nheko packaging

Quick note that nheko (v 0.6.3) is now packaged for FreeBSD as well. The C++ code was fine (we use Clang, that does trip up some people) but I have Opinions about the CMake code (in particular that the find code for nlohmann/json.hpp, lmdb++.h and tweeny.h could use a lot of work -- if I feel perky I may come up with a PR). Thanks for the good work!

Dart SDKs

I am trying to use libaqueous(Matrix Dart SDK) to create a cross-platform matrix client for Android and iOS.
Almost nothing works except Already a significant number of client features are available: login/logout, room list, basic timeline and message posting

Flutter is quite good for rapidly building mobile apps. ? Strong-typed json serialization/deserialization in Dart is a bit difficult at first, but I managed to solve that.
the repo is here, the SDK is here, and the room for discussion is at #libaqueous:encom.eu.org

Debug build apk from Gitlab CI is here

Notes on manually upgrading rooms, from TravisR

https://gist.github.com/turt2live/a99c8e794d6115d4ddfaadb72aabf063

Note that you generally won't need to do this.

That's all I know

Matrix Live with Kitsune

Synapse and the road to 1.0

Huge thanks to everyone who has helped increase the number of ‘1.0 ready' synapse installs. If you don't know what this means, see our blog. https://arewereadyyet.com reports > 60% adoption on a per server basis, and high 90s on a per user basis. We are now really close to being able to ship a 1.0 release candidate and start the 2 week countdown before releasing 1.0 proper.

This week we have focussed on performance, richvdh has been working on batching of outgoing read receipts and hawkowl shipped a much more performant implementation of user search. Erik has been putting the state compressor through its paces, he saw one room compress down to 1% of its original size. Andrew has been focusing on ensuring spec compliance on various Synapse endpoints and is currently looking at some bugs in the federation tester.

NixOS-Synapse setup

I open sourced my NixOS-Synapse setup: https://gitlab.com/MazeChaZer/nixops-servers/tree/master/matrix

Pattle, lots of progress and Dart SDK planned

Pattle for Android now has an F-droid repository: https://fdroid.pattle.im/

It's the most up to date version straight from the pipeline, so not necessarily stable.

You can now scroll up and load history

As part of the project, Wilko also announced the intention to create a Dart SDK:

I'm currently working on a Matrix SDK for Dart, which will be used for the Pattle rewrite in Flutter. The reason for this is outlined here. To summarize: My goal for Pattle is to release for not only Android but also iOS and web, with a single code base. Other reasons include that Android native development is just bad, and the fact that I'm not too happy with the official Matrix Android SDK design and documentation. I will maintain and also add some features to the current version of Pattle, to try things out. The Flutter version will replace the native one once the features are in sync.

Riot iOS

We've released a hotfix release 0.8.4 on App Store that fixes following issues:

• Unable to open a file attachment of a room message.
• Unable to share a file with whitespace in filename.

We are working on iOS 12 notifications features.

Riot Android

• Improving new notification system
• Implementing SAS verification

RiotX (Android)

• Setup CI
• Finishing Phase 0

Dimension sticker packs

Dimension now has beta support for custom sticker packs. To create a sticker pack:

1. Start a conversation with @stickers:t2bot.io
2. Say !stickers newpack and follow the prompts.
3. Share the URL with your friends.

1. Make sure you're using Dimension as your integration manager.
   • Not sure if you are? Click the 4 squares in the top right of the room in Riot - if the dialog is titled "Dimension", you're all set :)
   • If you aren't, check out https://dimension.t2bot.io
2. Click on the smiley face to the right of where you type messages then the Edit button in the top right.
3. Paste the URL of the sticker pack into the box and click "Add Stickerpack".
4. Start using your new stickers.

These instructions are also available at https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-dimension/blob/master/docs/custom_stickerpacks.md as is the admin/operator guide for running your own sticker bot (you're not stuck with using t2bot.io unless you want to be).
Custom sticker packs are still beta while the proposals to share this with the wider Matrix ecosystem are still works in progress. This serves as a proof of concept to see how crazy of an idea it is to have stickerpacks-as-rooms (yes, they're just plain Matrix rooms under the hood) and what needs ironing out before moving ahead with the MSC.

matrix-notification-profile-manager

Over the past few weeks, I grew a bit fed up of always having to turn on and off every notification rule each time I'm having a slight change in what I'm working on or depending on what mood I was in (e.g. want to focus only on work-related stuff and nothing else, don't want to hear about work at all, somewhere in the middle, etc.), so I built a notification profile manager for Matrix. It's available both as a command line interface or a Go package in case people want to build on top of it.

It allows one to take a snapshot of their current notifications settings and save that as a profile, so that this profile can be applied later. It also allows one to delete a profile or list the existing profiles (more features to be added as time goes by). In order to make the whole thing interoperable with other projects building on top of the Go package, it also uses the user's account data on the user's Matrix homeserver to store profiles.

neo v4: iris

After discussion following https://cyberia.social/@foks/101785513826000032 I've resumed development on Neo. Suggestions are very much welcomed on the pad and mastodon thread
I'm implementing components one by one now, with just mocked events. Actual Matrix integration will come when the gui components are ready.

Neo is now partly integrated with matrix-js-sdk because I grew tired of having to write my own mock events. There's a basic authentication flow, with 0 error handling, and parsing of m.text and m.image events

Check out https://git.lain.haus/f0x/iris for the source code and see a working version at https://neo.lain.haus/neo

f0x also said:

it would be much appreciated to get some feedback on how I implemented matrix-js-sdk, had to do some weird stuff to make React update

solari[z|s]ed wallpaper

mautrix-telegram 0.5.0 released

mautrix-telegram 0.5.0 was released after I finally fixed the bug that was causing the bridge database to lock up. It turned out to be a single line of ORM usage that I had missed while converting everything to use SQLAlchemy Core. The full release notes are at https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-telegram/releases/tag/v0.5.0.I also released v0.5.1 to fix a bug that made the DBMS migration script not work and Python 3.5 compatibility. I wouldn't recommend using Python 3.5 though, I'm going to drop support for it some time after Debian 10 is released

Shevski mentions Matrix on BBC Radio 4

Yesterday on @BBCRadio4 I talked about the problems of centralisation, how to regulate big tech, personal data stores and @redecentralize! You can listen online here: https://t.co/xGHK812lYa with #Web30 section starting 1:50 mins in ? (I'm from 7mins ish) #redecentralize pic.twitter.com/m0dazBH7Dk

— Irina (Ira) Bolychevsky (@shevski) March 22, 2019

Extras

This React Native client is not announced so don't look at it

My pal Doug shared his frustration with the broader state of the chat ecosystem after reading that teens now use Google Docs for their chat needs (and not the chat feature, the document itself!)

I love that you've got Amazon with their Alexa messaging, Apple in their own bubble with iMessage, Facebook doing chat 3-ways and Google trying 50 ways to do chat. And that's before you even get into things like Slack, Discord, Telegram, Riot, Line, WeChat etc etc. And then the current hot way to chat is in a document...
I mean, how much money is being invested in trying to create the perfect chat solution?

That's all I know

See you here next week, and on Matrix!

Matrix Live S3E17: Hello Ryan

arewereadyyet.com: Matrix 1.0-ready Federation

Spec

Lots of activity but most notably MSC 1915 (a blocker for Matrix 1.0) is making progress. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1915

Synapse . . . 1.0?

It's all about 1.0 for the Synapse gang this week. This means performance improvements across the board in the form of read receipt batching, user directory (room directory coming soon!) and rate limiting on log in and registration APIs.

Brendan shipped the low bandwidth CoAP proxy we demo'd at FOSDEM

As well as a bunch of spec implementation projects to ensure that Synapse (and Sydent) are ready for Synapse 1.0.

Synapse workers projects

synapse-netcore-workers is progressing as strongly as ever. This week has mainly been supporting a couple of users trying to use the fed sender, and also trying to make it more performant and less crashy. I've been using it solidly for two weeks now, and by and large it's been working nicely :)

Support for replication protocol in Cortex is mostly complete. A federation sender worker implementation is being worked on. If anyone is interested or wants to contribute, please go to #cortex:encom.eu.org

Construct

Lots of progress this week. I'd like to give a special thanks to Yan Minari for another great week of testing, bugfixes and feature requests.

• We implemented features related to room directory lists, reporting content, ignoring users, VoIP turnServer, prev_content in state events.
• Improving SSL: allowing configurable lists of ciphers, and sending/receiving SNI.
• At the lower level: adding support for Linux AIO features that are present in newer kernels, giving a nice performance boost.

New Client for Android: Pattle

Hey all, I've been working on my Matrix Android app, Pattle! The goal of Pattle is to be an easy to use app for Matrix, with it's design inspired by popular apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. Development happens here, and contributions are encouraged! The app is not currently suited for daily use, but some functionality is there, such as registering, logging in and viewing chats. Currently it's an Android only app using the official Matrix Android SDK, but the plan is to support iOS and web too, in the future. There's also a sort of design document available, stating how Pattle differs from standard Matrix apps and what it's goals are. The intent of the design document is to make development easier later on for other platforms

• Get APKs to test: https://git.pattle.im/pattle/android/-/jobs
• and join the development room: #pattle:matrix.org

Quaternion 0.0.9.4 beta 2 available

Quaternion 0.0.9.4 beta 2 (too many numbers? That too shall pass) is out, with bugfixes and translation updates. Notably, Quaternion won't crash on upgraded rooms in some cases, and won't cry in #gsoc:matrix.org and other v3 rooms. Translators are still strongly encouraged to push forward - due to all the features and fixes, there are many untranslated strings across the board! Also, some bugfixes are still in order before we can call the release RC, and some of them are really easy - so if you'd like to contribute, it's a great time to start!

Riot Web

• Preparing for 1.0.4 release with lots of small polish fixes
• Planning our roadmap for the next few quarters

Riot iOS

iOS released 2 times. Last release was to fix an issue with invalid scalar token. Review of one PR from the community for iOS10 notifications. Started implementing device verification with emoji.

Riot Android

We've released v0.8.25 on Thursday, containing refresh of invalid scalar token, and some bugfixes. Links on m.notice messages are now clickable again.
Started implementing device verification with emoji.

RiotX (Android)

• We started to setup build tools and CI configuration.
• The timeline scroll issues are addressed.

FluffyChat 11 released

• Improved stability and performance
• New translations - thanks to all translators
• Design improvements to make FluffyChat look more like a common Ubuntu Touch app
• Better tablet support
• Lots of Bugfixes which caused a critical error
• Fixed the automatic scrolling up to the last seen message
• Fixed disabling account

miniVector v0.8.25

Matrix Ruby SDK

I just realized that I haven't had lazy loading activated by default in the Ruby SDK, despite having had lazy loading code in place since ages back, so now that's going to be the default value going forward.

I started hacking - just a couple of hours or so ago - on a notification sender for The Foreman, a server orchestration system. So it can forward notifications to Matrix. https://github.com/ananace/foreman_notification_send

maubot

maubot plugins can now add their own endpoints to the main maubot webserver. The pingstat plugin I announced last week uses this feature for the leaderboard widget: https://maubot.xyz/_matrix/maubot/plugin/pingstat/stats?room_id=!MbRaSiMIRhhxDtJENL:maunium.net

matrix-appservice-bridge 1.8.0, matrix-appservice-irc 0.12.0-rc1: room upgrades and more

matrix-appservice-bridge got a 1.8.0 release last night, featuring automatic handling of room upgrades for all your room upgrade needs. Providing your bridge uses the RoomStore as designed, it's literally a few lines to enable :). Changelog here

What is this? A matrix-appservice-irc release? No, it's a release candidate. Announcing that 0.12.0-rc1 is now out and about for folks to play with. More IRC updates to come in the future :)

mautrix-whatsapp

mautrix-whatsapp now has support for postgres databases thanks to a pull request by @Rennerdo30

mautrix-telegram

mautrix-telegram got a pull request with a pytest setup and a few unit tests by @V02460. I haven't merged that one yet, but will soon.

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy supports Dimension

Thanks to NullIsNot0, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy can now (optionally) install the Dimension Integration Manager.
The playbook can now also assist with serving the base domain from the Matrix server, thus making it easier for some folks to set up well-known Server-Delegation.

Self-hosting guide for NixOS

I wrote a Matrix self-hosting guide for the NixOS operating system: Check its progress and give it a test if you're a fellow NixOS user!

banhammer: new bot for applying a ban policy

I wrote a small bot that takes a kick/ban policy from room state from all rooms it's a member of and tries to enact that policy. In practice that means it applies a regex to all MXIDs and tries to kick/ban them based on that. It's been a request of TravisR , source code is available at https://gitlab.com/jcgruenhage/banhammer, documentation is still lacking but will hopefully soon be added

matrix-wug support for Navajo script

FreedomBox Tutorial: Setting Up a Chat Server with Matrix and Riot

Around the Internets

That's all I know

AreWeReadyYet.com?

Folks, in the run up to Synapse 1.0, if you are running your own homeserver now would be an excellent time to check that your TLS certificates are up to date. Point your server name at https://matrix.org/federationtester/ and if there are errors check our handy FAQ on how to fix it. If you do not have valid TLS certificates Synapse 1.0 will refuse to federate with you.

benpa has put together a federation checker to quantify how many homeservers are 1.0 ready - https://www.arewereadyyet.com/ - It currently stands at 50.5% let's try and get that to 60% over the weekend.

Aside from all that, the team have been working on preparing for Synapse 1.0, you can track our progress here. We promise not to just land 1.0 out of the blue - we'll give everyone a 2 week warning to give stragglers a chance to get their certificates in order.

JeonServer and related project updates

First Release Candidate of the Jeon Project with upcoming Client-Server API 0.5, Server-Server API 0.1.1, Application API 0.1, Identity API 0.2 and Push API 0.1. Also the RC of the jmsdk has been prepared with Java Matrix Client for Client-Server API 0.5. Changes in the C2S: Added the m.push_rules event, removed presence list methods and other minor fixes. Added S2S API of the 0.1.1 version. I prepared a very simple page https://ma1uta.github.io/ with links to the swagger schemas (json and yaml) for all Matrix API which generated from the Jeon code.

Construct updates

There's a lot of progress, a few endpoints and features have been implemented this week such as Room Tags and all of the spec features for /createRoom. Most of the progress has been with testing and bugfixes thanks to Yan Minari, and tulir and mujx. We've fixed several interactions with synapse such as invite accept/deny and synapse's ability to join and leave construct created rooms without any issues. Lastly and most important, we've generated an official issues list thanks again to our star tester Yan Minari available here https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct/issues

OpenSAPS: Open Slack API Server

To everyone who wonders how to connect his application to Matrix (at least for notifications of some kind) - use OpenSAPS! It just reached v0.1.0. OpenSAPS stands for Open Slack API Server and able to retransmit messages from applications (like Gitlab or everything that can send data to Slack) to somewhere else. Right now these "somewhere else" is a Telegram (with HTTP proxy support) and Matrix! Written in Golang to ensure minimal memory footprint. Take a look at https://gitlab.com/pztrn/opensaps Tested with Gitlab and Gitea but should work with almost any service. Join #opensaps:pztrn.name to talk with developers or get help. BTW, there is OpenSAPS instance in our room that transmits everything from gitlab.com into room! (almost) immediately after 0.1.0 comes 0.1.1, with fixed URLs parsing and fixed inability to login into servers which use .well-known for delegation. It should work [with other webhooks]. If something strange happens there is also a possibility to write own parser to make everything work :)‚ Tested with Gitlab and Gitea ATM. Share application names that work, I'll start to make a list of them. :D

matrix-puppet-bridge: matrix-puppet-slack and matrix-puppet-hangouts updates

• matrix-puppet-slack 1.12.0 has been released. This version:
  • Fixes incorrect room alias reserved prefixes (thanks to jeffcasavant!)
  • Handles a new kind of Slack event (hence the minor version bump): channel renames (thanks to d3m3vilurr !)
• matrix-puppet-hangouts 1.0.1 has been released.
  • The patch fixes node 8 compatibility broken by a recent change.
• Work is ongoing to replace unwieldy Promise chains in matrix-puppet-bridge with async/await, to make the lives of maintainers & contributors easier.

MiniVector update

Minivector, a minimalistic fork of riot-android had a new release last week, getting rid of a few more unused dependencies. This brings the final apk size down to 13mb vs riot android's 25mb. This work was done by @hrjet:matrix.org. The project room is here: #miniVectorAndroid:matrix.org

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy, now with Discord and email templates

Thanks to Lionstiger, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports Discord bridging via matrix-appservice-discord.
Those wishing to give it a try can refer to the Setting up Appservice Discord bridging documentation page.

Thanks to Sylvia van Os, matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now has the Ability to customize mxisd's email templates

Quaternion 0.0.9.4 beta

between chasing bugs in Quaternion 0.0.9.4 beta (translators, your help is hugely needed to catch up with new and updated strings) there happens almost literal bikeshedding in #qmatrixclient:matrix.org, under an excuse of discussing The Universal Algorithm to Colour Usernames. Join the fun!

Bifrost bridge gatewaying

Bifrost is now starting to comfortably support gatewaying. For those that don't know, gateways allow a remote user to participate in the matrix network without prior bridging, it's very fancy. The latest changes are that XMPP clients can now ask for the public room list by querying the bridge component. There is a video on this using the Yaxim XMPP client on Android (Credit to Ge0rG). Come chat with us in #bifrost:half-shot.uk

Spectral development restart

Spectral development now continues after a short break. The new "material design" has been merged into master, along with a few bug fixes. I plan to work on Kirigami port in the following two weeks.

Fractal

Since our last update about Fractal we landed typing notifications, found out we actually weren't logging anything, recovered the ability to log, and restored spellcheck support.
We are also now tagging uploaded audio files as such and adding thumbnails to image files, courtesy of our Outreachy intern, and we fixed a bunch of other things.

#ping:maunium.net

I made a room for !pinging echo maubots: #ping:maunium.net. The room has a bunch of echo bots, currently on maunium.net, c.mau.dev and matrix.vgorcum.com. It also has a new maubot plugin called pingstat, which collects the pong data and makes a leaderboard website. The website is linked to the room as a widget.

synapse-netcore-workers

Not much news to report on the netcore-workers other than it's maturing and we have nice things now like logging, metrics and a docker image you can run at home. I'm running the federation sender fulltime on half-shot.uk to dogfood it and will announce when I think it's good for general consumption :)

matrix-wug, IPA rendering bot, gets support for cherokee

This is "script" or written language has a very interesting story behind it, where the creator of it actually couldn't read and write. Regardless, he wanted to write down his language, and developed his own writing system.
The characters look a lot like latin characters because he tried to imitate the characters of a bible. Just a fun history lesson!

weechat-matrix

since weechat-matrix is a bit involved to install, I create a dockerfile that takes care of it: https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix/pull/60 . And people allergic to docker can look inside to check the steps (just reading the readme doesn't give a full picture)

modular.im

There are some new announcements this week:

Today we are pleased to announce that you can now customise your Modular hosted Riot at the touch of a button, through the Modular host admin interface. Better yet, this is available to all Modular customers at no additional cost.
Today we are also launching a proof of concept for purchasing additional content via the Modular integration manager.
For the initial experiment we're offering a set of "snazzy", limited edition Matrix stickers for the princely sum of $0.50. These are digital versions of the Matrix and Riot hexagons that some of you may have seen in real life.

Still more!

If you have a stickerpack you'd like to see included, please let me know.

Celebrating the creation of a new homeserver instance at kde.org, Jonathan Riddell has written an article.

sortebill created #drums:matrix.org:

I've made a room for anyone interested in drums and percussion. Acoustic, Electronic, Played or Programmed, anything goes as long as it's rhytm related. The room is focused on both playing/programming drums and equipment.

They think it's all over...

No Ben this week, apparently he is allowed to go on holiday from time to time. Also no Matrix Live because we are terrible people - bring back Ben, that's what I say.

Quaternion

Quaternion (master branch, and upcoming v0.0.9.4) can now open rooms by their aliases or ids upon pressing Ctrl+O, as long as those rooms are already in your room list (opening arbitrary public rooms will come in later versions). You can even paste matrix.to URIs for users (will open direct chat) and rooms in the same dialog. Navigation to known rooms inside Quaternion also works.

libQMatrixClient 0.5 is out - with members lazy-loading, room versions and upgrades and much more: https://github.com/QMatrixClient/libqmatrixclient/releases/tag/0.5.0

weechat-matrix

Matthew reports:-

weechat-matrix's e2e support is really impressive (via matrix-nio and python-olm). It can only read rather than send right now, but otherwise looks to be massively on the right track. It even does fingerprint-based verification!

Synapse

Hawkowl has spent some time improving CI so that we don't get queued up for hours waiting for builds (woo).

Admins - your weekly reminder that if you've not already done so, you must ensure the TLS certificate on your federation endpoints is no longer self signed - see our handy guide for all the details.

matrix-puppet-bridge

matrix-puppet-bridge v1.17.0 has been released! This release:

• Handles m.notice messages sent from Matrix as text, instead of ignoring them (thanks go to https://matrix.to/#/@cdknight1:matrix.org !)
• Sets rooms invite-only when they're touched, instead of relying on others not knowing the room ID (thanks to https://matrix.to/#/@AndrewJDR:matrix.org , from all of us who federate on the homeservers we use to bridge!)

Matrix rooms representing remote rooms being joinable by anyone who knows the room ID (which is generated, at least in part, from the remote room ID in all the matrix-puppet-bridge applications) was a big deficiency, and it's finally resolved. It wasn't known whether or not we could do this, and have our ghost users still be able to join the rooms (they need to be invited instead of just joining themselves), until it was attempted and tested in a few of the bridge applications.
Because it is a big deal, new minor versions of matrix-puppet-slack, matrix-puppet-facebook, matrix-puppet-hangouts, matrix-puppet-signal, matrix-puppet-imessage and matrix-puppet-groupme, bumping the matrix-puppet-bridge version to 1.17.0, have been released.

Riot iOS

• Support .well-known data from login response
• Create right permalinks for room v3
• Fix builder to Xcode 10.1 in order to still be able to release
• Update swift version. Add swiftLint

matrix-media-repo

matrix-media-repo has alpha-quality support for s3 (and s3-like services) on the travis/s3 branch. Intrepid testers are encouraged to give it a shot, and report bugs. Caution: may upload your cat.

Scylla

Scylla, the Elm-based Matrix client, has received a few improvements. Included in this update:

• Files that are uploaded now keep their original name (as opposed to being called File)
• Sent messages are displayed right away, instead of when they are delivered to the server
• Usernames are only shown once per several consecutive messages, to avoid clutter Some CSS changes have been made to keep the interface looking clean

Almost forgot! You can find Scylla's source code here and a live instance here!

Riot Android

• Implementation of .well-known support (SDK and Riot)
• Minor change on some colors of the themes (link, home badges)
• Many issue will be fixed regarding linkification
• KeysBackup: improvement on recovery process: importing keys step is 8 times faster, and user get more feedback during the process which can take several seconds
• We will prepare a new release for the beginning of next week.
• PlayStore new descriptions have been updated for the following languages: Bulgarian, German, English (US), French, Hungarian, Russian and Chinese (Taiwan).

RiotX (Android)

• Timeline:
  • HTML formatting
  • Implementation of pills (need optimization)
• Many Github issues have been created to track parity with the Riot Android

Riotic: new fork with updates

I've slightly tweaked Joakim Ahlen's Riot wrapper for macOS, riotic, which uses the native WKWebView instead of Electron. I updated the app to be sandboxed so it has very limited access to your system. I also updated the interface to follow macOS conventions and updated it to use the latest version of Swift.

riotic does have some limitations though. Riot doesn't support VoIP on Safari so riotic can't support VoIP either and WKWebView doesn't support notifications as far as I can tell. Right now it uses a really old Riot icon, maybe I'll ask about using one of these community made icons https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/pull/4474.

It does have some advantages over the official Riot Electron app though. The app is only ~12 MB compared to Riot which is ~180 MB, it also uses significantly less RAM. riotic also allows you to pick what Riot URL to use so you can run /develop as a desktop app.

You can download riotic from https://github.com/aaronraimist/riotic/releases/tag/v1.1.

synapse-netcore-workers

The synapse-netcore-worker project has continued to evolve. You can now federate with other servers using the federation sender implementation. It supports everything except device lists at the moment, so it supports PDUs/EDUs and can just be connected up to one of your existing synapse instances. It's not been battletested enough yet to be put in production (hence no dockerfile), but it's very fast.
Oh and for those of you who don't know, "synapse-netcore-worker" is Travis's .NET implementation of synapse workers, the room can be found at #synapse-netcore-workers:t2bot.io.

But wait, there's more! Half-Shot continues with

To give an update to the earlier exploits of synapse-netcore-worker's federation sender, we've still got a few more things to iron out before we can suggest people use it actively. The hit list of remaining things to fix is in https://github.com/turt2live/synapse-netcore-workers/pull/5

Mautrix Whatsapp

Ruby SDK

Ananace

Just merged the protocol split branch I've been working on for the Ruby SDK, including a first PoC for an application service base. Not tested in any actual use as of yet, but expect Things TM in the next release.

Koma

yuforia

in project koma, a new bot picsay is created. It like the classic easter-egg program cowsay, but it uses actual photos instead of ASCII art. It configured to use any image just by editing a json file. So you can run your own version for fun.

TChap

Willem

I took some time to hack on Tchap again. This time I disabled virus scanning of thumbnails and downloads in Tchap to be able to see avatars. I also wrote a non-scanning virus scanner API implementation to be able to see files, pictures and videos that are sent. The updated Tchap can be found at https://github.com/14mRh4X0r/tchap-android, the virus scanner API implementation at https://git.snt.utwente.nl/14mRh4X0r/tchap-media-scanner.

Debian

andrewsh

Unless things get seriously on fire in the coming months, Debian buster will have Synapse 0.99.2 plus something newer in backports

Matrix WUG

Hi I can help you translate X-SAMPA, Z-SAMPA to IPA, and transcribe into proto-indo european notation! Use (x/z/p) together with either / or [] as delimeters x/"hEloU/ z[or` 5aIk DIz] p/mreghnom/

I also can transcribe to Inuktitut Syllabics like this: i[tusaumaqattautijjutinik aulattijiit]. Find my source at https://github.com/Dali99/matrix-wug

New Rooms

Now that the Formula 1 season is getting underway it's probably a good time to announce @CIA:matrix.org's new(ish) room: #f1:matrix.org When this blog post is released there will be 16 days left before the first race of the 2019 season
There was previously a Formula 1 room but it was merged with Snoonet's IRC channel which tends to be extremely busy. This is a matrix only room.

Matrix Live S03E15 - Push To Talk and XMPP Gatewaying!

(sorry that the audio from Nad & Half-Shot went missing from the recording... :( )

nheko_reborn roadmap

The remainder of 0.6.x is expected to be bug fixes. This includes bug fixes in mtxclient as well as nheko.
0.7.0 will be the next feature release. The end goal here is to add some of the capabilities that people have been requesting, and other things that people haven't been requesting.
AFTER 0.7.0 releases, I will then focus on updating the encryption to include more than just text messages.

libQMatrixClient project, Quaternion

Master branch of Quaternion can now store access token in your secure storage/keychain, better integrating into frameworks of GNOME and KDE, as well as macOS and Windows.
Also, you can see the room version and upgrade rooms in Quaternion (just like Matthew said on FOSDEM ;) ) - this feature is enabled by libQMatrixClient, so other clients are welcome to support room versions/upgrades too!

All this is within the work on the upcoming release of libQMatrixClient 0.5 and Quaternion 0.0.9.4 - stay tuned!

Synapse

With all the interest generated through Riot 1.0 we've seen a surge of new and returning users on matrix.org. So we've spent much of the week investing in stability and performance. We'll ship a new point release (0.99.2) next week.
Once again a big flashing advert that Synapse admins should no longer be using self-signed certificates for their federation API. Synapse 1.0 is scheduled in early March and will not accept self signed certs - so servers that do not update will lose the ability to federate with 1.0 servers. Updating your certs is straight forward, see our guide and FAQ for more info.

Matrix Ruby SDK

Just tagged and pushed a new version (0.0.4) of the Ruby SDK, since I've completely forgotten to do that for a while now.

A whole bunch of small stuff I did, mostly just additional exposed methods and parameters, and some fixed issues as well. I did add support for HS URL discovery using both SRV and .well-known though, which I think is probably the largest new feature.

Created a discussion room for the Ruby SDK - since it seems like there are now people who have actually used it apart from me; #ruby-matrix-sdk:kittenface.studio

synapse-netcore-workers

Half-Shot has been working on federation workers:

I've been working on a federation worker for synapse written in .NET to improve outgoing federation performance. It's still pretty barebones, but progress can be followed at https://github.com/turt2live/synapse-netcore-workers/pull/5

I'm also working on my own netcore workers project by setting up an appservice sender. It's also very barebones (doesn't even send a transaction), but is being tracked here: https://github.com/turt2live/synapse-netcore-workers/pull/6
Also, if you'd like to follow along with the project from the comfort of Matrix, head on over to #synapse-netcore-workers:t2bot.io

koma project

Fix txnId generation that made sending messages unreliable. Work around a bug in OkHttp that crashed the dispatcher thread when the server certificate was not received in time.

Fix text processing in the bot avecho, feel free to try it out in #koma-im:matrix.org

mxisd v1.3.1 released

mxisd v1.3.1 is out. It is a maintenance release that fixes a set of regressions following the changes in v1.3.0 to massively improve performance. If you haven't updated to the v1.3 branch, now is the time!

Construct progresses toward Matrix 1.0 Spec

Over the past three weeks Construct has made rapid progress with covering the Matrix 1.0 specification!
Last week we implemented room version 1 and room version 2 authentication rules.
This week we implemented device support and management, and have nearly wrapped up successful End-To-End Encryption testing.
The Construct is a community-driven server implementation written in C++ for maximum performance. To all experienced C++ developers out there: we need your contributions to accelerate and test the 1.0 release!
Please check out https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct and stop by #test:zemos.net / #zemos-test:matrix.org today!

uMatriks planning

• Clean up c++ code
• Make the c++ code less heavy, we should focus on speed
• Offload js code to direct qml binding, with this i mean instead of having ablock if-else code that modifies qml object that runs on component load, we do this directly in qml: see 0a800fc and https://github.com/uMatriks/uMatriksblob/0a800fcdc0af4fa2e08526dbff88e06bcb591779/uMatriks/componentsChatItem.qml as an example for a cleaner code
• Make all ui depended calls async, we should NEVER block ui
• Offload heavy js logic to c++
• Cleaner UI, with less crust
• Async everything
• Merge our WIP call support
• Finish impl of call support (maybe move to a standalone webrtc module)
• Slowly start moving to QQC2
• Implement reply
• Implement sending of media

Riot Android

• Finalising version and delivery of Riot 0.8.23 on the Play Store.
• RiotX: testing library to render events in the timeline.

Debian packaging

Since Debian has entered soft freeze, updates to Synapse have been slow lately, but nevertheless we've got 0.99.1.1 in

matrix-archive-keyring

matrix-archive-keyring (from last week's TWIM) is ready to be uploaded to Debian. Attempting to get it uploaded to unstable right now as I speak.

Riot breadcrumbs

mautrix-whatsapp

Around the Web

joenas wrote an article on configuring Synapse with Traefik: Matrix homeserver (Synapse v0.99.1.1) with Traefik

That's it

Matrix is getting a lot of attention recently (has it been on the front page of HN every day this week? I remember that I used to be excited seeing that happen), and seeing a lot of growth as well.

If you have something to say here, something to add, come chat to us in #twim:matrix.org - I love that this is a supportive and engaged project ecosystem, so come share what you have!

Matrix Live, Synapse roadmap and Synapse 0.99.1.1

We also have Synapse v0.99.1.1 available, as the race to Synapse v1.0 gets closer and closer and closer!

Brendan also said, regarding low-bandwidth:

Some of the week has been spent finalising the components used in the low-bandwidth demo we did at FOSDEM. This required polishing some internal developments, which are now almost ready to be published to the wide world! This should happen in the next few days so stay tuned :)

Riot 1.0.0, and hotfix 1.0.1

Particularly exciting is the new encryption verification process, involving sharing a list of emojis out-of-band:

thank you @matrixdotorg @RiotChat - with the new update the office is full of people yelling names of emoji at each other

— Russell Currey (@russelldotcc) February 15, 2019

MSCs update provided by MSCBot

In Progress MSCs

• MSC 1888: Proposal to send EDUs to appservices
• MSC 1884: Proposal to replace slashes in event IDs

Riot iOS

• Last iteration on key backup UX
• Finish reskin
• Support Room v3 events ids
• Key import (manual or backup restore) has been optimised. It is now 30x > quicker
• An RC candidate will be available over the weekend

Artificial Intelligence Chat Bot tutorial

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-wLKnB6JvU for getting started with the library,
• and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRVVn-8CzXE to see the Matrix integration!

New(ish!) Python SDK: matrix-nio

As if this wasn't enough! python-olm is a library providing Python bindings for Olm (enabling E2E encryption for Matrix.)

FluffyChat v11 preview

boring refactoring stuff :-( at the moment to prepare everything for e2e encryption work

In my role as editor of this particular blog post, I enjoy certain luxuries that others might envy. For example, today, I tried a new preview build of FluffyChat. This I installed on my barely-repaired OnePlus One running Ubuntu Touch 16.04.

Fractal

Over the past week, Fractal has adapted its main view and room settings views for mobile phones, and implemented long-press for right-clicks on messages for touch devices. It's also received some changes in the backend to use the serde_derive Rust crate instead of parsing JSON by hand.

matrix-tag-manager

If you're a power user which uses room tagging to organize your rooms, I've made a web UI for you: https://tags.t2bot.io/

mxisd v1.3.0 released

mxisd v1.3.0 is out! This release brings the massive performance improvements, bug fixes and enchancements. This release also marks the two years anniversary of the project. Thank you to all our users for your undying support!

EdimCoder new room

I made a room for my ed-inspired modern line editor called EdimCoder. Come check it out at #edimcoder:amorgan.xyz!

avecho

a new bot avecho is created using the koma-library. It's a simple bot that echos text messages prefixed with avecho, but renders it into an image and include the sender's avatar.

Ananace's k8s docker image

Pushed 0.99.1.1 for the K8s optimized docker image, going to stop building Python 2 images after 1.0.

Half-Shot's .NET SDK

More improvements to the .NET sdk, to make it stable in this 0.4.0 world. To that end, I've written a room archiver app (for moving "old" rooms into a archive tag without removing them) and a simple caching project for bridges https://github.com/Half-Shot/matrix-cache. Progress as always can be followed in #dotnet:half-shot.uk

mautrix-telegram now at 0.5.0rc2

mautrix-telegram got a bunch of changes and a release candidate.\\nMain changes this week:

• Added Matrix room upgrade handling
• Fixed bugs
• Added new admin commands and config options
• Added new bugs to fix later
• Stopped using the ORM part of SQLAlchemy

QMatrixClient project: libQMatrixClient and Quaternion

QMatrixClient project has been busy merging PRs from contributors (close to tray and middle-click in room list and user list, to mention a couple) and streamlining the translation process before the upcoming releases of libQMatrixClient 0.5 and Quaternion 0.0.9.4. At the same time the feature branch to support room versions and room upgrades is at an advanced stage; expect the features to land in master next week.

matrix-archive-keyring

I've paused porting Synapse to OpenBSD this week, while I attempt to both fix and revert some security issues caused by sudo apt-key add for Matrix.org and Riot.im packages for Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution users.
matrix-org/synapse PR #4609 was my first attempt to fix the problem, however I fell short this time in ease-of-use and my implementation had other issues. (Read: The repo-key.asc downloaded from Matrix.org Debian repository should go to /usr/share/keyrings, and must not be added by apt-key add or added to /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d directly. I attempted the latter with my first PR; but that would've allowed the Matrix.org signing key to also be used to verify packages from Debian's main repositories. Yikes!)
As my second attempt, I'm now creating a new Debian package called matrix-archive-keyring. There's multiple things this package intends to do:

• A post-install script to remove any previously added Matrix.org package signing keys from /etc/apt/trusted.gpg. (This is the file apt-key add most commonly uses, and the most commonly found bad advice on the Internet.)
• Convert repo-key.asc to a de-armorized .gpg format, understood better by apt(8). (Essentially, gpg --dearmor.)
• Install the converted .gpg key to /usr/share/keyrings.
• Make sure apt(8) uses the newly added key for Matrix.org repository only?
• Deliver any updates to repo-key.asc directly to you via apt upgrade. Your operating system might then also do it automatically for you if unattended-upgrades(8) is installed on your system. ?
• Make sure everything goes away when this keyring package is uninstalled. No more sudo sh -c 'apt-key del C35EB17E1EAE708E6603A9B3AD0592FE47F0DF61; rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/matrix-org.list to get rid of the repository.

I have one more interesting enhancement to disclose.
We can ask you with debconf if you want to install deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian $(lsb_release -cs) main to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/matrix-org.list while you're installing the new keyring with apt install matrix-archive-keyring.
You'll most likely notice the difference in install instructions, as a result of this package. Before and after:

# Before sudo apt install -y lsb-release curl apt-transport-https echo "deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian `lsb_release -cs` main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/matrix-org.list curl "https://matrix.org/packages/debian/repo-key.asc" | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt update sudo apt install matrix-synapse-py3

# After sudo apt install matrix-archive-keyring sudo sh -c 'apt update && apt install matrix-synapse-py3

If you are a Debian or Ubuntu user and Synapse homeserver operator using Matrix.org repositories, I'll be towncrying when this package becomes available as much as I can. All you should need to do then is apt install matrix-archive-keyring and it should patch the security holes in your operating system if you've formerly installed packages from Matrix.org or Riot.im! (The command may change a bit, because next Debian operating system release "Buster" has entered soft-freeze just today (2019-02-12) and not accepting new packages into that release.)
PS: I'm at #debian-matrix:matrix.org, please come talk to us if Debian packaging interests you!

For the eager early testers not afraid of building from source, matrix-archive-keyring version 2015.12.09+debian0.10 is available for early testing (attached).

# Something like this! sudo apt install devscripts tar -xfvJ matrix-archive-keyring_2015.12.09+debian0.10.tar.xz cd matrix-archive-keyring_2015.12.09+debian0.10 debuild -us -uc sudo dpkg -i dpkg -i ../matrix-archive-keyring_2015.12.09+debian0.10_all

Please follow Debian Bug#922155 for updates. Debian binary packages will be available later sometime this/next week from Debian's unstable distribution (contrib), if all goes well and there are no remaining Debian policy violations or serious bugs.

See also:

• vector-im/riot-web issue #6470: [website] change instructions for adding .deb repository key
• DebianRepository/UseThirdParty at Debian Wiki",

Gridepo

Gridepo, as a Matrix Homeserver, is gaining basic support for Matrix Client API. We have basic login, room creationg, message sending and sync working! A little screen recording of the progress can be viewed here for live action with Riot. As a reminder, Gridepo is a clean rewrite of mxhsd.

This is not usable yet outside of a dev environment but we should have a first usable version with federation in a couple of weeks!

Mention Bots page

That's all I know

Huge week! Let's go!

Matrix Live: Riot Redesign Chat (2019-02-08 - Season 3, Episode 13)

Riot-web new version coming out so soon. So soon! It looks and runs great, you can use it today at https://riot.im/develop. Includes a labs flag for displaying custom tags, which I love. Watch the vid.

FOSDEM 2019

• two Matrix-themed packed-room talks
• lots of people coming to chat at the stall to say things like "hi" or "I like Matrix" or "what is Matrix? … wow that sounds amazing, how can I get involved?"
• 1000s of stickers decentralised out of my bag onto people's laptops

Synapse 0.99.0

Synapse 1.0.0 will be compliant with r0.1 and the goal of Synapse 0.99.0 is to act as a stepping stone to Synapse 1.0. Synapse 0.99.0 supports the r0.1 release of the server to server specification, but is compatible with both the legacy Matrix federation behaviour (pre-r0.1) as well as post-r0.1 behaviour, in order to allow for a smooth upgrade across the federation.
It is critical that all admins upgrade to 0.99.0 and configure a valid TLS certificate. Admins will have 1 month to do so, after which 1.0.0 will be released and those servers without a valid certificate will no longer be able to federate with >= 1.0.0 servers.

GSOC 2019

Matrix.org has applied to be a GSOC (Google Summer of Code) mentoring organisation. If your matrix project has a feature a summer student could tackle and you have the time to mentor them over the summer, why not add a project idea to our website by submitting a PR to this repo. Feel free to ask questions in #gsoc:matrix.org as well.

Latest MSCs

Approved MSCs

• [MSC 1504]: Homeserver resource limiting error codes

In Progress MSCs

• [MSC 1840]: MSC1840: Typed rooms
• [MSC 1849]: MSC1849: WIP: Proposal for m.relates_to aggregations
• [MSC 1866]: Add proposal for invite error code for unsupported room version
• [MSC 1862]: MSC1862: Presence Capabilities

matrix-puppet-hangouts 0.1.0 released, with bidirectional image support

matrix-puppet-hangouts version 0.1.0 has been released!
This release adds bidirectional (Hangouts -> Matrix and Matrix -> Hangouts) image support!
It also bumps the version of matrix-puppet-bridge (the common core of matrix-puppet-bridge bridges, which handles most of the stuff that's the same between different third-party service bridges, and makes implementing new matrix-puppet-bridge bridges easier) required to 1.16.2, the current latest, for recent bugfixes that improve all matrix-puppet-bridge bridges.
0.1.0 also requires Python 3.5+, for async. Older versions of python3 won't work. PRs getting python3 < 3.5 working again are welcome.

These changes are also brought to us by d3m3vilurr, Honored Hero of Matrix Puppet Bridge

Bifrost Bridge

This week I have been hard at work fixing a lot of the bugs that have cropped up from bifrost's rapid development. We now have a docker image available (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-bifrost).

SMSMatrix now available on F-Droid

SmsMatrix just got released in the F-droid store. Now everybody can install and get updates from the F-droid store. https://f-droid.org/app/eu.droogers.smsmatrix

matrix-media-repo from TravisR now supports .well-known server delegation

matrix-media-repo now supports .well-known server delegation (compatible with Synapse 0.99 and r0.1 of the server-server specification), among many other bug fixes and improvements. Actually validating the certificates presented by servers will be implemented alongside Synapse 1.0's requirement for it.

Dimension from TravisR now supports .well-known server delegation

Dimension now supports .well-known server delegation (compatible with Synapse 0.99 and r0.1 of the server-server specification). Actually validating the certificates presented by servers will be implemented alongside Synapse 1.0's requirement for it.

mxisd v1.3.0-rc.3

mxisd v1.3.0-rc.3 is out. This is hopefully the last RC before release, but we would like as much testing as possible! the v1.3 branch is a big enhancement on the previous release with big performance and privacy improvements. It's smaller, faster, stronger and protects you privacy even better than before! You know you want it!

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports Synapse v0.99

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports Synapse v0.99 and should be ready for Synapse v1.0.
If you're using the playbook to manage your Matrix server you should upgrade soon.
Depending on how you've customized your setup, you may not even have to do anything for the big Synapse v0.99/v1.0 transition, besides upgrading and re-running the playbook. A good place to start is the changelog entry: Synapse v0.99 support and preparation for Synapse v1.0

Tchap Android client

After seeing a demo at FOSDEM of Tchap, the app the French government uses to access their Matrix network, I decided to try to get it to work as a general-purpose Matrix client. The app uses email and password to log in, and infers the homeserver address from the homeserver name. So to get it to work, I had to patch the app and write a little proxy so it gets the proper homeserver (and optionally identity server) from an email address.
A patched version of Tchap can be found at https://github.com/14mRh4X0r/tchap-android, code for the proxy at https://git.snt.utwente.nl/14mRh4X0r/tchap-proxy. At the moment it's very crude, and images/files don't work since the virus scan API is unimplemented, but at least it can be used outside the French government. ?

Riot iOS

• Still iterating on key backup UX
• Fix various share extension bugs (image sending failure, links share as text, etc…)

Riot Android

• Still iterating on the key backup UX, changes concern Riot and the Matrix SDK
• Valere has worked on Riot Android Notifications, we intend to merge this work on develop at the beginning of the next Sprint.
• RiotX: no update this week due to François being out of the office

.NET SDK

I opened up the .NET SDK project for the first time in two years and revived it to just about work with a r0.4.0 home server. Its now based on .NET core 2.0.

Spectral, soon for KDE Plasma Mobile

I'm porting Spectral to KDE Plasma Mobile with Kirigami framework. This provides full convergence and mobile support.

Preparing for Synapse on OpenBSD

This week I've been porting Synapse's dependencies to OpenBSD -current distribution. There is no port yet for Synapse in OpenBSD. Ports missing from OpenBSD 6.4 for Synapse's dependencies were:

• py-frozendict: ok'd, waiting…
• py-unpaddedbase64: TBD
• py-canonicaljson: TBD
• py-signedjson: TBD
• py-treq: WIP (this will take a while, lots of dependencies)
• py-daemonize: ok'd, waiting…
• py-pymacaroons: TBD
• py-phonenumbers: 8.10.4 done, waiting to be imported…
• py-prometheus_client done, needs to be tested/imported…
• coturn: TBD, maybe?

Of those, py-phonenumbers was added to OpenBSD
-snapshots (-current) distribution. py-phonenumbers (?) and py-service_identity received updates to ports. py-prometheus_client, py-daemonize and py-frozendict are ported ready and waiting to be given "ok" at OpenBSD's [email protected] mailing list.
There is an unofficial up-to-date Synapse port exists at GitHub maintained by someone else, which I've not yet tested. (At glance, I can take a guess the devel/tz port may not be required.)
(coturn doesn't have a port yet, may have to look at it later.)

c u l8r

MSC (spec) updates

Even apart from that, let's take a look at the MSCs (Matrix Spec Changes) that are currently in progress.

Approved MSCs

• [MSC 1339]: Proposal to add a GET method to read account data
• [MSC 1229]: Mitigating abuse of the event depth parameter over federation
• [MSC 1779]: MSC1779: Proposal for Open Governance for Matrix.org (v2)
• [MSC 1354]: Widget API extension: Always-on-screen

Final Comment Period

• [MSC 1831]: MSC1831: Change the order of .well-known and SRV discovery techniques
• [MSC 1819]: MSC:1819 Remove Presence Lists

In Progress MSCs

• [MSC 1538]: MSC1219: storing megolm keys serverside
• [MSC 1796]: MSC1796: improved e2e notifications
• [MSC 1797]: MSC1797: Proposal for more granular profile error codes
• [MSC 1544]: [WIP] MSC1543: Key verification using QR codes
• [MSC 1768]: [WIP] MSC1768: Proposal to authenticate with public keys
• [MSC 1769]: WIPish: MSC1769: Extensible profiles as rooms
• [MSC 1802]: MSC1802: Standardised federation response formats
• [MSC 1767]: MSC1767: Extensible event types & fallback in Matrix (v2)
• [MSC 1772]: WIPish: MSC1772: Groups as rooms (v2)
• [MSC 1776]: [WIPish] MSC1776: Implementing peeking via /sync
• [MSC 1777]: [WIPish] MSC1777: peeking over federation
• [MSC 1780]: [WIP] MSC1780: Add DIDs and DID names as admin accounts to HS
• [MSC 1781]: [WIP] MSC1781: Proposal for associations for DIDs and DID names
• [MSC 1607]: MSC1608: Proposal for room alias grammar

Synapse

This week has been all about gearing up for v0.99.0 and if you would like to help us test it, our latest release candidate lives here
We've taken the decision to bump up to v0.99.0 because it is very much a precursor to v1.0. When v1.0 lands it will contain a breaking change that means all homeservers will need a valid certificate for their server to server endpoint, self signing will no longer be possible.
v0.99.0 contains support to help you do this, but once it lands all admins will need to upgrade, failure to do so will mean losing the ability to federate with > v1.0 servers.
We'll have detailed docs ready to go alongside the full v0.99.0 release, and we plan to leave at least 1 month between v0.99.0 and v1.0, but for now please be aware that the change is coming.
Huge thanks to Rich, Erik, Hawkowl and Anoa for all their work in getting us to rc stage.

nheko_reborn

I think I'm getting pretty close to having another release ready. Need to clean up some things here and there and get the CI packages uploading correctly
It'd be good to have more community engagement

Riot iOS

• New app icons
• Most of e2ee keys backup screens are done. We are only missing the sign out warning which invited the user to back up their keys before logging out
• A Beta release is on its way to TestFlight

Riot Android

• Finishing e2ee keys backup screen
• Integrate new app icons, and splash
• Release in Beta
• Riotx: improvement in room list, read marker management

journal

I've posted another blog on journal about the next steps for the project, including my thoughts on verifying blog content.

https://journal.lukebarnard.co.uk/journal/26-jan-2019

I'm planning to start work on the component that will scrape blog content from a matrix room. This will most likely involve a dedicated bot that syncs new journal blog events, verifies the blog signature and then writes the blog content to a file on the blog server.

I'll probably ramble about the details of that at some point.

fed-tester

The fed-tester frontend has received an overhaul. It's dark now, is more responsive, and will show the new ValidCertificates, and Information fields. Found errors and warnings are now shown at the top, instead of having to traverse the table yourself. Hosted at https://neo.lain.haus/fed-tester with code at https://git.lain.haus/f0x/fed-tester Room for both the frontend and backend is #fed-tester:lain.haus

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now has much-improved security. All services now run in containers with a non-root user from the very beginning, without capabilities and with a read-only filesystem. To learn more, see the relevant changelog entry.
Thanks to a contribution by Devon Maloney (@Plailect), matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now has IRC bridging support via matrix-appservice-irc. To learn more, see the Setting up Appservice IRC documentation page.

neo

Not too much work on Neo this week, but there's some smooth animations for the roomlist now video, with music, which is surprisingly complicated in css
https://git.lain.haus/f0x/iris

libaqueous - Matrix SDK in Dart

libaqueous (the Matrix SDK in Dart) is progressing nicely. A reference implementation is also planned.
The repo is at https://gitlab.com/b0/libaqueous, and I also set up a room at #libaqueous:encom.eu.org

ma1uta's Matrix projects: Jeon, JMSDK, matrix-jabber-java-bridge

Not much changes in jeon, jmsdk and matrix-jabber-java-bridge (mjjb).

• Jeon: improved mxid with a new validation, support of the 11 java. And preparing the new release.
• Jmsdk: fixed few bugs.

matrix-jabber-java-bridge

The bridge is being re-written. I excluded the jabber server (still need to setup SRV records) and implementing the xmpp s2s api in the bridge. Done:

• rfc6120 in s2s part;
• almost server dialback (XEP-0220);

Remaining:

• MUC (XEP-0045);
• stabilize.

New version will allow:

• 1:1 conversations between matrix and jabber users;
• group chats by double-puppet mapping rooms to conferences;
• additionally xmpp users can join directly to rooms via double-puppet bots.

Also I started breaking the bridge to modules. And the next module will be ActivityPub S2S module which allows communicate matrix servers with other fedivers.

mxisd

mxisd v1.3.0-alpha.3 is out! This one works further towards protecting your privacy and we strongly recommend it if you already are using an alpha release. We have written our stance on privacy with how it affects mxisd here.

We also consider this release to be as stable as v1.2.2. Feel free to upgrade following the Upgrade notes and benefits from all the v1.3.0 work so far, especially the massive improvements on resources usage.

Purism working on Fractal integration

update on @gnome @matrixdotorg client for #PureOS: "I am pleased to announce that over the next week I will be working to make Fractal's UI adaptive for the Librem 5's launch. This contract began last week, and I already have some results to show off." https://t.co/iX47u1Bdb1 pic.twitter.com/Hnr7ZVpYd1

— Purism (@Puri_sm) January 30, 2019

Definitely take a look at the linked blog post for more.

What else is there?

If you will be attending, come /join us at the Matrix table, where there will be stickers and t-shirts and merriment, and definitely come and attend the talks:

• Matrix in the French State 14:00 Saturday in Janson (Communications Track)
• Breaking the 100 bits per second barrier with Matrix 10:40 Sunday in H.1309 (Van Rijn) (Real Time Communications (RTC) devroom)

Matrix Live S03E12 - Modular.im

This week I chatted to Rick about the release of Modular, Hosted Homeservers and more. We're pleased to be able to announce the availablity of a HipChat migration tool to get people into Matrix.

Latest MSC updates (from anoa's MSC bot)

Approved MSCs

• [MSC 1339]: Proposal to add a GET method to read account data
• [MSC 1229]: Mitigating abuse of the event depth parameter over federation
• [MSC 1779]: MSC1779: Proposal for Open Governance for Matrix.org (v2)
• [MSC 1354]: Widget API extension: Always-on-screen

Final Comment Period

• [MSC 1813]: MSC 1813 - Federation Make Membership Room Version
• [MSC 1659]: MSC 1659 Proposal: Change Event IDs to Hashes

In Progress MSCs

• [MSC 1544]: [WIP] MSC1543: Key verification using QR codes
• [MSC 1538]: MSC1219: storing megolm keys serverside
• [MSC 1796]: MSC1796: improved e2e notifications
• [MSC 1797]: MSC1797: Proposal for more granular profile error codes
• [MSC 1767]: MSC1767: Extensible event types & fallback in Matrix (v2)
• [MSC 1768]: [WIP] MSC1768: Proposal to authenticate with public keys
• [MSC 1769]: WIPish: MSC1769: Extensible profiles as rooms
• [MSC 1802]: MSC1802: Standardised federation response formats
• [MSC 1607]: MSC1608: Proposal for room alias grammar
• [MSC 1772]: WIPish: MSC1772: Groups as rooms (v2)
• [MSC 1776]: [WIPish] MSC1776: Implementing peeking via /sync
• [MSC 1777]: [WIPish] MSC1777: peeking over federation

Synapse

• Working furiously towards an r0 spec release. Event ids as hashes (MSC 1659) and S2S API certificates (MSC 1659 ) are very close now - see https://github.com/orgs/matrix-org/projects/8 to track our progress.
• Since MSC1711 is a breaking change, we will initially ship our next release (v0.35.0) with ACME support to make it easy to provision and renew certificates. The give everyone a month to upgrade and install a cert before we ship Synapse v1.0 which will require that servers have certificates in order to federate. Don't worry, there will be plenty of details on the steps necessary for admins when v0.35.0 lands - watch this space.
• Finally a raft of db performance improvements, room version upgrade bug fixes, as well taking a look at room directory and user directory efficiency.

matrix-puppet-slack

matrix-puppet-slack version 1.10.1 has been released, thanks again to @twouters

• The bridge could not create new Matrix rooms on versions of Synapse after a certain change, because it did not reserve the room alias prefix it used. That's been fixed, but anyone currently running matrix-puppet-slack will need to edit their slack_registration.yaml and restart Synapse. See the Release for instructions on doing so.
• The bridge will no longer send "Edit: " events when Slack sends it a "message_changed" message, if the message text has not actually changed (Slack sends these events for URL previews, for example, but this just causes duplicate bridged messages). This fix has been a long time coming.

matrix-corporal

matrix-corporal 1.3.0 was released.
It uses a new Matrix API for fetching account data (Synapse >0.34.1 is required), so it performs reconciliation quicker than before.

Reconciliation is now much faster, due to the way we retrieve account data from the Matrix server (no longer doing /sync).
From now on, the minimum requirement for running matrix-corporal is Synapse v0.34.1, as it's the first Synapse release which contains the new API we require (GET /user/{user_id}/account_data/{account_dataType}).

journal

I have an update on journal (finally). I've pushed the redesign branch that I've been working on. It contains the web view component of the new architecture and can be used as a generic blog-hosting site (I'll be doing this personally). Feel free to check it out here: https://journal.lukebarnard.co.uk/journal/1-jan-2019

Riot-web

• Redesign
• Typing notifications don't make timeline jump anymore
• Jump to bottom button is overlay now, so we can finally hide the room status bar again most of the time
• Working on room sublist resizing
• Work on authentication flow
• Work on settings

Riot Android and iOS

• Reskin of Riot is nearly finished. Last known issues have been fixed.
• Keys backup screen development well underway! We're working to fit everything nicely on mobile platforms - there are some UX/UI specificities to consider.
• Riotx (new version of riot for Android, built using the upcoming kotlin SDK): more and more event types supported in timeline.

Quaternion

the macOS build for Quaternion 0.0.9.3 turned out to be not complete and fails if the user doesn't have Qt installed. Thanks to Aaron Raimist the build has been now includes a snapshot of Qt 5.11 - if you tried and failed to run the .dmg from https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion/releases, you can try to use it again.

Neo client

Neo is still in the GUI component design stage (the best stage to get involved with feedback!). I have implemented the jdenticon library for avatars, autoscrolling when there are new events, and I've added the Rust code of conduct. https://git.lain.haus/f0x/iris
General vision for this project is to first get as much gui done as possible, before diving in the backend. This will be split into a separate module, with the gui component being as protocol-agnostic as possible, to allow different backend modules for XMPP or IRC as well.

Fractal client

matrix-js-bot-sdk

the matrix-js-bot-sdk has received a bunch of updates currently residing on the develop branch. Changes include unit tests covering most of the library, appservice support improvements, handling of room version upgrades, and a bunch of bug fixes.

cl-matrix

I've been working on cl-matrix and I think now it might be in a good condition to talk about it.cl-matrix is a WIP client library written in common lisp, most of the API endpoints have been covered using macros that allow you to copy straight from the spec, here is an example using the send event endpoint:

(define-matrix-endpoint room-send-event (:put) ("rooms" room-id "send" event-type txn-id))

this will expand into a function with the signature:

(PUT-ROOM-SEND-EVENT AUTHENTICATION ROOM-ID EVENT-TYPE TXN-ID CONTENT &KEY PARAMETERS)

it also has some basic events defined using deeds that can be issued using the sync endpoint.

Informo

Not much news this week in Informo land, though we have a few specs proposals that are still open for public review, including SCS #19 (rendered version here) which rewrites the specs website's introduction to make it more newcomer-friendly and feature a brief introduction on what Informo is about.
People who either never had a look at the project, or got fed up trying to because of the difficulty to easily understand what we're building, we'd love to read your opinion on this! ?

matrix-autoinvite

matrix-autoinvite is a very basic service that synchronizes joined rooms between users from different servers, by inviting missing users to the room.
I'm using it to invite @CromFr:matrix.org to each Facebook Messenger rooms on my personal homeserver (that has very limited resources) hosting the matrix-puppet-facebook bridge. This way I can chat with people on facebook from a matrix.org account :)

matrix-register-bot

A long time ago I started writing matrix-register-bot. Now as there is a new requestor of it I finally implemented the planned features and released 0.1-rc1
Feel free to test it and ask questions or provide feedback in #matrix-register-bot:msg-net.de

Other thoughts

linux.conf.au is happening right now in Christchurch, New Zealand (editor's note: is this right? .au or .nz?), and they've been partly using Matrix for their comms.

FOSDEM is in a week! Come chat in #matrix-fosdem:matrix.org. Be there and be square. I'll be there with Matrix swag so ping me if you'll be attending.

When will I see you… again?

Matrix Live S3E11

Latest MSC updates (from anoa's MSC bot)

[MSC 1229]: Mitigating abuse of the event depth parameter over federation [MSC 1497]: MSC1497: Advertising support of experimental features in the CS API [MSC 1501]: Room version upgrades [MSC 1354]: Widget API extension: Always-on-screen [MSC 1339]: Proposal to add a GET method to read account data

MSC 1794: Federation v2 Invite API

[MSC 1796]: improved e2e notifications [MSC 1797]: Proposal for more granular profile error codes [MSC 1607]: Proposal for room alias grammar [MSC 1544]: Key verification using QR codes [MSC 1802]: Standardised federation response formats [MSC 1804]: Advertising capable room versions to clients [MSC 1538]: storing megolm keys serverside [MSC 1681]: cross-signing [MSC 1659]: Proposal: Change Event IDs to Hashes [MSC 1767]: Extensible event types & fallback in Matrix (v2) [MSC 1768]: Proposal to authenticate with public keys [MSC 1769]: Extensible profiles as rooms [MSC 1772]: Groups as rooms (v2) [MSC 1776]: Implementing peeking via /sync [MSC 1640]: MSC: Replace event IDs with hashes [MSC 1777]: peeking over federation

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

It's a New Year and there have been a lot of improvements to the matrix-docker-ansible-deploy playbook:

• there's now support for importing an existing Postgres database, which should make it easier for people with another setup to migrate over.
• there's now support for manually-managed and self-signed certificates, in addition to the Let's Encrypt support we've always had
• the playbook now uses a much better (20x smaller, faster) riot-web Docker image (avhost/docker-matrix-riot -> bubuntux/riot-web). At least until vector-im/riot-web#7771 gets merged and official images become available.
• completely redone way of generating mxisd configuration, letting people unleash the full power of mxisd without us having to explicitly add support for new features
• mxisd 1.3.0-ready. We default to a stable mxisd release still (1.2.2), but people can try the much-improved 1.3.0 alpha releases even now (e.g. matrix_mxisd_docker_image: "kamax/mxisd:1.3.0-alpha.2").
• we now utilize mxisd's User Directory Search feature to augment the results coming from Synapse
• the playbook has been split into multiple roles (one role per component) and the roles have been made independent of one another. People who want to re-use our roles in their own playbooks can now more-easily do so.
• even more components have become optional and can now be turned off completely (coturn, mailer)

Lots of thanks go to Maximus, jcgruenhage and Cadair for helping out!

libQMatrixClient and Quaternion

libQMatrixClient 0.4.2 has been released, fixing a security issue (the library could be tricked into altering the local room state by fake state events - those without state_key). The master branch of the library is updated as well - it is strongly recommended to update to either 0.4.2 or master, depending on which branch you live on.

For those who want to help testing Quaternion or just can't wait to the next release, we now have CI builds collected at bintray: https://bintray.com/qmatrixclient/ci/Quaternion. Linux and macOS are already there, and Windows binaries will also be available any day soon.

matrix-client.el

matrix-client.el can now send typing notifications.

matrix-puppet-slack

matrix-puppet-slack v1.10.0 has been released, thanks to Cadair and (once again!) d3m3vilurr!

v1.10.0 fixes Matrix-to-Slack image upload, and no longer sends markdown-formatted @-mention links in the plaintext body of Matrix events; instead, it uses plaintext username the way text-only clients traditionally have it.

The version bump is also the project's 100th commit, and I've updated the supported feature checklist in the README to paint a more comprehensive picture of what is and isn't supported, and link out to the GitHub Issues for some of the unsupported features, in hopes of making life easier for users and encouraging contributions.

opsdroid

opsdroid's Matrix connector is now a core part of the library rather than an external addition. This should open up a lot of cool possibilities for doing fancy stuff with bots on matrix. Many thanks to Cadair for helping with this.

mxisd

mxisd has a new alpha release: v1.3.0-alpha.2 - Fixes a set of issues from alpha.1 and is now close to v1.2.2 stability. If you are already on alpha.1, update is highly recommended.

continuum (previously, "koma")

made some minor changes to continuum to make the GUI more intuitive. Now when there are no joined rooms, buttons for joining or creating rooms are shown instead of an empty list. And when there are issues with syncing or syncing takes longer than usual, a status bar with options is shown.

mauview

I've been working on a new Go TUI library for gomuks: https://github.com/tulir/mauview

Still not quite sure if it's a good idea, but at least the input area component is very nice. It should also make it easier to add more fancy stuff like html tables and selecting messages (for replying/redacting)

Riot iOS

We are still working on the key backup screens. The last bit on the SDK side, the passphrase support, has been implemented this week.

Reskin is almost done. It just needs some small adjustments. We will release a beta soon so that we can gather users feedback.

This week, we have also fixed small but boring UX issues in Riot and we will continue to do so up to the end of the month and FOSDEM!

Riot Android

Reskin is almost done too and available on develop builds.

Benoit has started to implement the key backup passphrase management in the SDK. Valere is still improving push notifications at the code level but also at the display level.

We are working hard to polish the app for FOSDEM.

Modular

We now have a HipChat migration tool - https://www.modular.im/tools/hipchat-migration. This tool helps migrate a HipChat workspace to your very own Modular Hosted Homeserver. Migration is performed by uploading an exported copy of an existing HipChat workspace so that the tool can automatically re-create all of the users and rooms (including messages and attachments) on your new Matrix homeserver. Once the migration is complete all of the migrated users will be emailed with login instructions, so that they can seamlessly continue chatting where they left off in HipChat. If your organisation (or if you know of an organisation that) has not yet decided what to do when Stride & HipChat is discontinued next month, come and try Modular!

Synapse

The Synapse gang are working flat out towards r0 and a v1.0 release - you can track our progress here (https://github.com/orgs/matrix-org/projects/8). Aside from that if you haven't already done please please upgrade to v0.34.1.1 (https://matrix.org/blog/2019/01/15/further-details-on-critical-security-update-in-synapse-affecting-all-versions-prior-to-0-34-1-cve-2019-5885/)

Dendrite

People have been generally happy about the flood of new issues following the completion of the internal audit last week, and a few folks have been opening PRs addressing some of the “good-first-issues” labeled ones, which has been amazing to see, including fixing room joins and a couple of default variables. Thanks a lot to Cnly and Behouba for these!

On my end, this week mainly consisted in reviewing most of these PRs (and merging them when that was possible), while anoa worked on making Dendrite's CI more complete and reliable, especially by configuring it to run sytest against Dendrite which will allow us to better track its compliance to the Matrix specification.

If you're interested in contributing on Dendrite, there's still some “good first issues” open, and we'll be happy to chat and help in #dendrite-dev:matrix.org ?

Synapse in Debian

the most recent synapse, using Python 3, is available in both stretch-backports and Debian testing

Discord Bridge

Discord bridge v0.4.0 is out now, nothing new since rc1 because it was that good. There have been no changes since rc1 because either Sorunome did a stellar job of keeping things stable, or nobody spoke up out of fear :p. Thanks one and all for continuing to run the bridge.

New Dart/Flutter Matrix SDK

I am prototyping a Matrix client SDK in Dart. It will target Flutter (Android, Fuchsia and iOS), web (AngularDart or other) and Dart VM.

f0x returns to Neo

Neo v4: Iris is coming up, focusing on design first. It will be based on React, and the matrix js sdk
I didn't plan ahead enough with old Neo (v3), so it became a bit of a clobbered togeather mess, which I'm trying to prevent this time around
https://git.lain.haus/f0x/iris

That's all for now

Welcome!

Spec

[MSC 1497]: Advertising support of experimental features in the CS API [MSC 1339]: Proposal to add a GET method to read account data [MSC 1501]: Room version upgrades

MSC 1708: .well-known support for server name resolution MSC 1711: X.509 certificate verification for federation connections

[MSC 1794]: Federation v2 Invite API [MSC 1796]: Improved e2e notifications [MSC 1797]: Proposal for more granular profile error codes [MSC 1640]: Replace event IDs with hashes [MSC 1776]: Implementing peeking via /sync [MSC 1777]: peeking over federation [MSC 1779]: Proposal for Open Governance for Matrix.org (v2)

(A few may be missing as we're still tweaking mscbot :)

Dendrite

The Dendrite audit is over! A bunch of issues have been created on the Dendrite GitHub repository, as well as a project board in order to keep track of everything: https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/projects/2
There's a fair amount of issues that have been labeled as “good first issue”, so feel free to pick them up and open pull requests if you're looking into hacking on Dendrite! :)

Synapse

This week saw the release of v0.34.0.1 and v0.34.1.1 both contain critical security updates so please update asap if you have not already done so. See here for more details, we'll be able to share a bit more about the vuln once admins have had a chance to upgrade.

Aside from that we've been making progress against getting s2s api to r0 and Synapse to v1.0. Rich has been grappling with federation certificates (MSCs 1708, 1711) and Erik is pushing on with event ids as hashes MSC 1640. Meanwhile Hawkowl has been cranking out bug fixes and perf improvements and in particular taking a look at taming the user_ips table.

latest synapse (0.34.1.1, Python 3) in Debian, fixing CVE-2019-5885; an update to a previous release fixing this CVE uploaded to stretch-backports, using Python 2. Dependencies for a Python 3 upload approved in stretch-backports, a Python 3 upload of 0.34.1.1 will be following later this week

Riot/iOS

Riot-iOS 0.7.11 has been released, with lots of bug fixes.

We have been working on e2e new screens (like key backup setup) and the re-skinning of the app.

Riot/Android

Working to improve notifications style.

Split screen mode will be supported on next release!

Continuous autofocus on the Camera has been enabled.

Also fighting bugs on registration.

Bridges

Matrix-appservice-purple is being renamed to matrix-bifröst, on the basis that we now bridge to things and "burning rainbow bridge" seemed like a good description.

Other things that have happened: Performance improvements, as always. XMPP -> Matrix typing notifications XMPP -> Matrix avatars XMPP -> Matrix uploads * Matrix -> XMPP uploads (via oob)

As promised, we've got a discord bridge release out today. v0.4.0-rc1 has landed! See the change notes https://github.com/Half-Shot/matrix-appservice-discord/releases/tag/v0.4.0-rc1 . Thank you to Sorunome for doing a huge amount of work on this!
@swedneck reports that:

linuxgaming.life is now running matrix-appservice-discord v0.4.0-rc1.

Matrix.org Foundation

Riot Web

• All new key verification is implemented! (in olm & matrix-js-sdk).  We're currently hooking up the UX.
• Online key backup is pretty much finished.
• Cross-signing is up next.
• Redesign backlog is progressing (slightly stuck on making the RoomList resizing work nicely, but almost there)
• Finalising the all new registration/login screens
• ...and loads of other stuff too.

Meanwhile...

Sending files landed in master branches of libQMatrixClient and Quaternion. Finally you can send your Quaternion screenshots (as any other images, jingles, cat videos etc.) to Matrix using Quaternion ;)

Also, libQMatrixClient is available as a Conan repository, for developers who'd like to use Conan to track dependencies.

Hello to all! I am write matrix bot for bridge messages between matrix and social network vk.com (russian analog of facebook). https://github.com/progserega/MatrixVkBot

matrix-client.el gained a room-list buffer, which can be sorted by unread status, name, number of members, etc, and has a right-click context menu like the room-list sidebar.

matrix-client.el gained right-click context menus in the room sidebar, allowing to set room priority, notifications, etc.

The matrix-client.el git repository has moved to: https://github.com/alphapapa/matrix-client.el

Hey guys, joined here to post another thing that works in Matrix https://gitlab.com/pztrn/check_mk_matrix_notifications it is a script that sends check_mk notifications to Matrix. Check_mk is a "plugin" for Nagios NMS.

It's not my update but I saw this HomeAssistant addon for matrix (https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-matrix) and wanted to make sure it got a shoutout on TWIM. [Seeing how nobody else has posted it in here, just on twitter etc.]

I published v1.0.1 of the pnut-matrix bridge this week which brings public pnut.io chat rooms to the matrix network. Features include syncing of pnut.io names and avatars, matrix users ability to authorize their pnut.io accounts, and administrative controls for managing linked rooms. Project can be found at https://gitlab.dreamfall.space/thrrgilag/pnut-matrix and discussion is at #pnut-matrix:monkeystew.net

ma1uta's MXToot deserves mention in the blog, and in https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html . People should not be wanting of Twitter over Decentralized-Federated F(L)OSS feeds in their Matrix room.

in the koma project, the desktop client continuum now does a full sync when the user account doesn't seem to have joined any chat rooms, this way, it can recover from some disk IO errors, or more commonly, unclean shutdowns. A ca-certificates issue with Java 11 on Debian stable was found while running a bot on a headless server, more details and the solution is in the README

Our first specs proposal of 2019 just landed in the form of SCS #16, which specifies the data/event structure for trust authorities. This is a big step as TAs play a key role in Informo's trust/reputation system!

In the meantime, we've also opened SCS #19, which proposes a rework of the specs' introduction with the idea to give newcomers a more accessible and immediate way to figure out what Informo is about, and give them some starting points so they can dive deeper into it if interested. It's a rather small one and we'd love people to give it a look so we can aim for the most newcomer-friendly version possible

We've also just opened SCS #21 which specifies a way for a source to change the Matrix user it uses to publish articles (e.g. if it was previously using a server managed by non trustworthy people). As with all of our proposals introducing changes in behaviour, it's open for people to share their comments on it for the next 7 days.

The first alpha release for mxisd v1.3.0 has been released with already major performance improvements. Early testing and reporting about success/failure would be very much appreciated as v1.3.0 will break backward compatbility. We have been running it on our own servers for about a week now and feels really good and stable.

I just launched OI Chat, a matrix service dedicated to Blockstack users (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/oi-chat).

It is a home server that does not rely on any passwords but on cryptography and user-owned storage

This is a first step towards login with private/public keys as suggested in MSC1768

OI Chat uses one-time logins to verify the ownership of a username that can only be created by the user if they control the blockstack account.

Welcome to 2019

Matrix Live S3E09 from 35C3

Welcoming Jason Robinson to New Vector

one of my dreams of working for a company that is a driver and leader in open source and open standards is coming true

matrix-appservice-purple

matrix-appservice-purple got soft launched on matrix.org and is happily bridging XMPP and matrix communities together. I am on full bug and feature fixing duty for it and the consensus from both sides is that it's looking pretty awesome.
The matrix-appservice-purple bridge is coming along leaps and bounds, with formatting fixes, presence handling and speedier message delivey both ways. Also a shoutout to the XMPP community for guidling me through the XEP landscape and giving the bridge a thorough testing. :)

Riot Web Experimental

Riot iOS

Photo sharing via the app share extension has been fixed this week.
At the time of writing, a new Riot iOS is baking with all bug fixes made the last month.

Riot Android

Riot 0.8.21 has been released on 01/02 on the PlayStore and on F-Droid.

This version contains:

• A new notification troubleshoot screen with the possibility to run a diagnostic and to submit bug report. Feedbacks are already coming and we improve this screen incrementally to help users.
• A new invitations counter on the group icon in the home screen
• Other bug fixes

We are still working on push/notification reliability. Riot Play Store resources have been translated into 8 languages so far: Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Portuguese (Brazil).

matrix-client.el's many updates

alphapapa provided many updates for matrix-client.el this week, I recommend chatting in #matrix-client.el:matrix.org where the cultists Emacs users and client devs hang out.

matrix-client.el gained more room sorting options and a /priority command to set room priority. It also includes a workaround for a Google Chrome drag-and-drop bug on Linux, so now Chrome users can drag-and-drop URLs, files, and images directly into room buffers to upload them.

matrix-client.el gained a new notifications-buffer feature that shows notifications from multiple rooms in a single list, allowing you to easily monitor multiple rooms at once and jump to events in them.
e.g. I can see messages from #matrix and #twim in the same window, and reply to messages in both rooms from the same prompt

koma project: now continuum-desktop (client) and koma library

in the koma project, the desktop client now has continous integration and prebuilt packages for Mac and Linux; and you can click on image messages to zoom in. A simple weather bot is created reusing the same implementation of matrix client api. Send it the name of a city, and it will fetch the current weather using openweathermap

Fractal

the Fractal team focused on improving code quality (including moving to Rust 2018) with a dozen merge request currently being reviewed (a couple of which have already been approved).

mxisd

All versions of mxisd dropped support for Riot v0.17.8, introducing a bug affecting many of its features. Any new release integrating this PR will also be dropped of support. mxisd users are strongly encouraged to roll back to v0.17.7

Dendrite audit progress

Dendrite's audit is finally coming to an end! I'm happy to say I just finished the “data collection” phase, in which I looked at everything that needs to be either fixed or implemented in Dendrite. This represents 90% of the work and around 3 weeks of full-time work. All that's left to do now is some triaging in the data (which is available here, by the way), into order to have a clear view on what's left to do in the audit. Expect a lot of new issues and a shiny project board appearing on the Dendrite repository next week ?

Informo news

Our specs bot, which shouts in Matrix rooms when the state of a proposal to a specs project changes, got an upgrade: it now handles concurrency better, and can now send multiple messages if multiple matching labels are added to the proposal in the same action (before, it just wouldn't know what to do in such an event and would fail silently).

msc-chatbot

msc-chatbot now exists. It has commands that let you view the status of current MSCs, as well as a daily summary of MSCs to keep people up to date.

Matrix-Minecraft bridge

I've brought my Matrix<-->Minecraft bridge back to life in the form of a Bukkit plugin. It's still in the very early stages of development and requires you to compile it yourself to get it, but it is a thing. Check it out on GitHub: https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-minecraft
It'll be designed to work as a public hosted bridge, so someone could use t2bot.io to bridge their minecraft server (for example)

stickerpack dimension migration tool

I've finished https://dali99.github.io/stickerpack-dimension-migration-tool/ for a niceish way to make migrations files for custom stickerpacks in dimension

XMPP (as Jabber) turns 20

Today is Jabber's 20th anniversary! Jabber would later be standardized and renamed to XMPP.

We'll meet again…

Welcome to the last TWIM of the year

Many of the core team have been out of the office this week, but there are still plenty of updates to share from the Matrix ecosystem!

mxisd v1.2.2

mxisd had a Holiday-special release: v1.2.2 before v1.3.0.

This release introduces two new big features:

• Username login rewriting via 3PID to allow advanced flows, like bypassing the synapse restriction of having numerical usernames for non-guest users
• Support for multiple Base DNs for LDAP backends

Work has started on v1.3.0 so this is definitely the last release before a non-backward compatible release.

Scylla

Hi all! I am working on a Matrix client in Elm, and I was recommended to share it here: Scylla

koma-desktop

koma-desktop is updated to JavaFx 11 and installation is simplified. Dependencies, including native modules can be packaged into one single file, which only needs to be downloaded and run. Java Runtime 11 is the only runtime dependency. Now it's just cross-compilation that needs to be set up before packaged releases can be provided for Mac, Windows, and Linux users.

Prometheus Alertmanager bot for Matrix

I started work on a Prometheus Alertmanager bot for Matrix. The basic idea is that Alertmanager can send webhook alert events to the bot which will then send the formatted events to configured rooms based on the alert receiver. It works, but is still early work in progress. See code and info here: https://git.feneas.org/jaywink/matrix-alertmanager.

QMatrixClient

This week QMatrixClient project gained some improvements in macOS support (thanks to Matthew and Aaron Raimist!); but most of Kitsune's time (aside from dayjob) has been spent on attachments uploading in Quaternion. This required improvement in support of uploading in the library. These changes have now landed in the master branches.

Fractal 4.0

As expected the Fractal team released 4.0 and is already hard at work on the next micro version. We recommend getting it from Flathub like we usually do.

New features:

• Enhanced history view with adaptive layout, day divider
• Reorganised headerbar, app menu merged with user menu
• Larger display of emoji-only messages
• Some performance improvements
• Opening a room jumps to first unread message

Bugfixes:

• More reliable notifications
• Fixed display bug for avatars

Under the hood:

• Large code refactor
• Logging infrastructure
• Continuous integration
• More informative build output

maubot

The new command handling system in maubot is ready. The new system should be much nicer to use when developing plugins.

Previously maubot had a system that was designed after the improved bot support spec proposal, but it wasn't very nice or pythonic. If/when the proposal or something similar goes through, I'll probably add support for it in the new command handling system.

Next I'll make some developer docs so that other people could actually make their own plugins.

The code is at https://github.com/maubot/maubot and you can ask about maubot in #maubot:maunium.net.

matrix-client.el new features

Emacs makes it so easy to integrate things. Now you can send org-mode syntax messages with the /org command in matrix-client.el.

Tab-completion of usernames and IDs was added to matrix-client.el.

matrix-to GitHub app

https://github.com/apps/matrix-to is a Github App which makes use of their shiny and new Content Attachments API/Webhook. When a matrix.to or view.matrix.org URL is used this app is activated. It adds a little snippet with the Room Title and Topic (if the room is peekable from matrix.org). In future it'll work for event permalinks, but currently there is no support for peeking context/event in Matrix API.

Example can be seen at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.to/issues/52#issuecomment-449878490. Idea courtesy of TravisR.

See you next year

I'm at 35c3 with some known characters from the Matrix world (as well as 15,000 others.) If you're here too, come visit us in our assembly, and also make sure to come to Dijkstra tomorrow to watch me present a look back at on the last year: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/events/9400.html. We have recorded a message for Matrix Live from 35c3, but will post tomorrow with some more footage from the event.

Otherwise, see you next year Matrix fan!

Matrix Live: Half-Shot talks bridges, and working on libpurple bridging to Matrix

You may have seen that Half-Shot been working fearlessly and tirelessly on bridges for many, many months. In this episode of Matrix Live Half-Shot chats with Matthew about his work, progress and achievements, with a focus on recent matrix-appservice-purple and XMPP work. Audio is not amazing, but worth listening to get acquainted with recent work.

The matrix-appservice-purple bridge gained a XMPP specific backend for better performance when you want to do just xmpp bridging. It's rather quick right now, and needs dogfooding.

Matrix badges on shields.io

Brendan:

A couple of weeks ago, fr1kin PR'd a nice Matrix badge to the Shields project that tells you how many users are in a public room. There were a few issues with it so I PR'd some changes to make the badge more usable, and it's now merged and live (as of yesterday evening), with examples available here! ?
For instance, here's a badge for TWIM: https://img.shields.io/matrix/twim:matrix.org.svg ?

Spec update

matrix-js-bot-sdk support for application services

matrix-js-bot-sdk has received early support for application services. Similar to the official matrix-js-sdk, the bot-sdk uses an Intent-based model for making bridges easier to write. Check out the simple example here for more information on how it works.

koma-library

The matrix client API implementation in koma is being extracted into a new repo, which is going to be a lightweight library for Kotlin.

Seaglass now available on homebrew

Installing Seaglass is now easier than ever. If you already use Homebrew to manage other packages, you can now install Seaglass with a simple brew cask install seaglass.

If you don't use Homebrew, you can still download Seaglass from GitHub.

matrix-client.el is reborn!

Many additions and improvements to matrix-client.el (https://github.com/jgkamat/matrix-client-el) recently, including a "standalone client" mode that launches Emacs to look like this.

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

the matrix-docker-ansible-deploy playbook has received some bugfixes and improvements lately. Most importantly, it's now running the freshly-released Synapse 0.34.0 under Python 3, so memory usage should be much better.

libQMatrixClient/Quaternion

I started work on matrix: scheme support in libQMatrixClient/Quaternion. Expect more news on this around New Year.

Fractal road to 4.0

The Fractal crew spent the week chasing last minutes bugs and made two beta releases (3.99.0 and 3.99.1) in preparation for the big new stable release, 4.0, which is right around the corner.

New Rooms for Space Launches and Aviation

#space:im.kabi.tk for anyone interested in space, rocket launches, satellites, etc.
Are you wondering what NASA's new Mars Rover is doing? Maybe you live on the west coast of the United States, and you saw that meteor on Wednesday night that came within minutes of a scheduled rocket launch and just after three astronauts left the space station. If any of that sounds interesting to you, feel free to join the room.
A Matrix bot is being tested to send updates about upcoming rocket launches to the room.

#aviation:matrix.org for anyone interested in aviation. Whether you are a pilot, someone who visits an airshow once in a while, or if https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk piqued your interest, come join.

t2bot.io upgrade

Just a head's up that I've increased the storage capacity of the database. With current projections, the server should be good for another year or two.

The database is also 1ms closer to Synapse and has a faster CPU in it. It probably won't make a dent in speed on federation, but it is a step forward.

I'll be rolling out python 3 to the homeserver this week too, which should help a little bit.

FluffyChat 8.0 RC announced

Hey guys, in order to release the FluffyChat 8.0 Christmas Edition, the FluffyChat 8.0 release candidate is ready for you! :-)
Also the weblate translations are ready: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/fluffychat/

Riot iOS

• We have fixed and improved some e2e stuff.
• Back to reskin. We start to implement e2e backup screens.

Riot Android

• New screen to troubleshoot notification issue has been merged on /develop.
• Splitting current Android SDK to separate crypto part is on it's way. We're doing this in order to be able to integrate crypto faster in the Riot reboot.

Synapse

We released 0.34.0! This release recommends Python 3 for production and brings with it huge performance improvements. If you've been putting upgrading off upgrading your Synapse, now is the time to do so. For more details here is a post that explains what you should expect and a recent Matrix Live interviews Amber (hawkowl) on the subject.

Aside from that we are working furiously towards federation R0 and have a bunch of MSCs to get us ever closer. You can track our progress here.

Synapse 0.34.0~rc2 in Debian since Tuesday, 0.34.0 uploaded today; both use Python 3 only

Dendrite

Dendrite's internal audit is progressing very well and is getting very close to its end.
What's left to do for me is check the implementation status of a few Matrix features, and translate those into tagged GitHub issues so that everyone can have as clear of a view as possible on what's left to work on.
I'm on holiday all of next week, but hopefully will have some good news about that the following week.

That really is it for now

Next week is various things. It's Christmas, which means there will be more hacking and coding happening than usual I expect! It's also 35c3, which I will be attending, and might affect scheduling next week. Stay tuned in #twim:matrix.org for news, and come join us in #matrix-35c3:matrix.org if you'll be there and want to meet up!

Merry Christmas!

Fractal Hackfest

Matrix Spec

• MSC1466 merged. MSC1466 from Erik describes "Soft Remote Logout", which avoids loss of encryption keys in circumstances of remote logout.
• MSC1730 entered FCP (final comment period, the last step before being merged.) read the proposal

This Week in Ruma

Ruma is not dead, however, and small improvements have continued over the last year. The Matrix spec has advanced quite a bit and many of the blocking issues for Ruma have been resolved. Rust's maturity is another story. async/await is still under development and this is the most significant blocking issue to progress on Ruma.

maubot new tooling

maubot got a command-line tool for building plugins and managing maubot instances. I also added some server-side stuff for easy registration of accounts in the management interface using synapse shared secrets, but the UI for that isn't ready. Also, I'm planning on adding some kind of small Matrix client in the management interface for manually managing the added bot clients. That might lead to a separate library that could be used in other projects or embedded in websites.

mxisd v1.2.1 released, updating recommended

mxisd hits v1.2.1 with a new maintenance release, fixing bugs and regressions from v1.2.0. Updating to v1.2.1 is strongly encouraged as v1.3.x will contain breaking changes and will not be a straight-forward update like v1.x has been until now.

Clients

Lazy-loading lands in QMatrixClient

reference implementation in Quaternion will follow up

Riot Web progress on /experimental and v0.17.8 released

Improved read markers now available on /experimental, needs further tweaking though. Brought back community UX on redesign, other small improvements.

Riot iOS

This new version supports the consent of matrix servers terms of service (including GDPR) in the registration flow. It also contains fixes for the "Empty room" bug, the registration issue on iOS 10, etc.

• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-ios/releases/tag/v0.7.8
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/releases/tag/v0.12.0
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-kit/releases/tag/v0.9.1

Riot Android

This new version supports the consent of matrix servers terms of service (including GDPR) in the registration flow. Many bugfixes SDK contains KeyBackup

• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-android/releases/tag/v0.8.20
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/releases/tag/v0.9.14

Servers

Synapse

Dendrite

My internal audit of Dendrite is continuing, drawing a more and more precise picture of what's left to fix and implement. I aim to have it over by the end of the year, or the very early days of 2019 at the latest. Folks can track its progress through https://cloud.abolivier.bzh/index.php/s/qXi2KFjCQk2c6eG

modular.im now has Extra-Large instances available

linuxgaming.life homeserver is the number one Matrix homeserver focused on Linux gaming

I've added some bots, health monitoring, and dimension integration manager to linuxgaming.life, and made the website dark.

That's all I know!

Matrix Live S03E06

In which Matthew & Amandine discuss The Matrix.org Foundation, go-live for the French Government deployment for Matrix, and some exciting random diversions into post-1.0 Matrix features which should land once once 1.0 is out the door!

Purism sponsoring Fractal development

We are proudly sponsoring the work of Julian Sparber on Fractal, the @matrixdotorg client for GNOME. Read his latest update - https://t.co/q4ubjzETxC #LibreDesktop #DemandFreedom #gnome

— Purism (@Puri_sm) December 5, 2018

Purism announced they are sponsoring Fractal development, starting with Julian Sparber working last month to improve the message view. You can read about his progress here. Highlights:

Before, there was a jarring cut when new messages were loaded, but now you can just scroll upward and older messages are loaded continuously.
The part I'm most excited about is the new "new message divider". When the user opens a room they can directly start reading the conversation from the last seen message and they don't need to search for the new message divider. Not only has the UX gotten a lot better, but also the underlying code is much cleaner now.
I also spent some time on making message rendering faster. I replaced the RegExp with more efficient code, this made the rendering much faster (from ~10ms to ~ 1ms) for every single message.
In summary, all of these things improve Fractal's UX a lot and make it feel more like a modern messaging app.

Synapse 0.34.0rc1

Dendrite

Started auditing Dendrite's codebase to identify what is left to implement, along with what hasn't been implemented correctly. Still a lot of work left to do on this, but it's looking promising so far.

Modular

Matrix -> Matrix account migration tool available at https://www.modular.im/tools/matrix-migration. It's still beta, so please test it and let us know if you experience issues.

New Homeserver: linuxgaming.life

Currently working on the website (based on t2bot.io, thank you travis for making that available on github!) and making things nicer in general.
I will be adding more bots shortly. Please let me know of any issues with the HS or anything surrounding it.

Informo

Work on the Informo specifications has slowed down a bit in the last couple of weeks, though since the last update we did manage to get some relatively big SCSs merged into the specs, including SCS #9 (rendered here) which specifies how information sources must publish their information through the federation, and SCS #11 (rendered here) which describes how sources must register themselves in order to be picked up by clients, and handle localisation. ?
There's still a couple of big items to take care of before we can cut a 1.0 release of the Informo specs but this is definitely a huge step towards this goal.

Minecraft Bridge

I started working on a Minecraft bridge pretty heavily based on Travis's old project, but using Minecraft-protocol instead of mineflayer.
You need a bot Minecraft account that can join and idle in the server, it then uses /tellraw to post messages.

Spectral

As Qt 5.12 was released a few hours ago, I am porting Spectral from 5.11 to 5.12. It will utilize QtQuick's new DelegateChooser to bring a faster timeline. Lots of code refactoring and cleaning are also going on.
I plan to drop Qt 5.11 support as soon as Qt 5.12 gets into major GNU/Linux distributions' repositories.

libQMatrixClient 0.4.1 released

libQMatrixClient 0.4.1 has been released today, with small fixes in the stable branch. Meanwhile, active work is ongoing on lazy-loading support in the library, with ETA for the feature landing in master being in about a week or so.

Riot Web

• Redesign progress: all resizeable sections are now persisted, (slow) progress on improving read markers
• Communities and community invitations should be more resilient to errors (on /develop only so far)

Riot iOS

• Reskin still ongoing
• A new release is coming
• Less activity because of POSS

Riot Android

• A new developer joined us to help maintaining Riot: Valere Fedronic
• Keys backup PR in review
• Privacy Terms acceptance in login flow in review
• FCM issue investigation/troubleshooting by Valere
• François Off (sick :()
• New theme is coming soon

Koma

This week in koma: implementation of json library switched from runtime reflection to compile-time code generation
The matrix api is implemented manually in the project, retrofit and moshi are used to interact with the rest api.

SimpleMatrix

Redecentralize meetup in London

Beer! And pizza! And also Redecentralize
We chatted to a nice bunch of folks both demoing their decentralized projects and talked to the likes of scuttlebutt, BBC, IPFS and more. Was a interesting experience having around 8 minutes to quickly explain to newcomers what Matrix is and why they should use it in a speed dating format. We chatted (and demoed) bridges, new-riot and generally how it all fits together. There were a lot of very interesting people with different profiles and backgrounds, and diversified questions which lead to a lot of interesting discussions.

matrix-wug, X-SAMPA to IPA bot

The end of the post, and nearly the end of 2018

Porting to Python 3 - Matrix Live S3E5

ZeroPhone

an open-source smartphone that can be assembled for 50$ in parts. It is Linux-powered, with UI software written in Python. Currently, ZeroPhone is based on Raspberry Pi Zero, SIM800L GSM modem and 1.3" OLED screen and button interface.

I stumbled across this blog post which mentions a matrix app in a project to create an open, hackable phone out of a raspberry pi. It's old news at this point I guess, but I don't think I've seen it mentioned here, so I thought it might be a neat thing worth featuring: https://zerophone.github.io/newsletter/ZeroPhone-Weekly-No.-16/

Hey everyone, I have been suggested to post about the Zerophone project here. I have written a basic matrix client for it. It's basically a simple phone based on a raspberry pi zero, focused on privacy, security and hackability.

Just to prove it's running on real hardware!

Spec / Foundation

• Work continues on MSC1730 - Mechanism for redirecting to an alternative server during login https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1730
• Foundation: Working with the Foundation lawyers on the CIC37 to register the Foundation as a Community Interest Company proper

The Federation (the-federation.info)

Matrix (or more specifically, Synapse) servers are now visible on the The Federation info website at https://the-federation.info/matrix%7Csynapse. The website collects lists of servers for various federation protocols (like Matrix, ActivityPub, Diaspora, etc). If a server outputs usage information, it also shows some historical information for servers and projects. Currently the information available from Synapse on the site is just version, availability of registrations and (obviously) domain name. If you want to register your server, check https://the-federation.info/info for more details. Tips also welcome on how to register other Matrix server projects and how to get more data out of servers.

maubot

• I made a rss plugin for maubot and added a fancy log viewer in the maubot management UI.
• mautrix-telegram 0.4.0 was released, though it has no changes since the release candidate. I also copied mautrix-telegram's HTML parser into mautrix-python. Hopefully it's now generic enough so that when mautrix-telegram switches to mautrix-python, it can drop most of the built-in HTML parser.

matrix-appservice-discord

Sorunome:

matrix-appservice-discord received a lot of work these past days. Not only the usual small bugfixes, but also some rather big changes: The parsers for both Discord->Matrix sending and Matrix->Discord sending were re-written completely to properly handle things (and thus, at the same time, crunch a bunch of edge-case bugs!). In addition, the long-awaited highlighting issues with @ everyone and @ here (on discord) and @ room (on matrix) were addressed. Some of these things are still in PR stage, but expected to be merged soon!

is just showing off having IRC+Matrix+Discord+XMPP plugged together. XMPP being the one purple is bridging

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports configuring the matrix-synapse-ldap3 LDAP auth password provider. Thanks to @tvo6 for contributing this!

Riot iOS

• User Agreement (GDPR) in now part of the registration flow
• Reskin has started
• New fixes for unexpected “Empty room”
• We have PR templates

Riot Android

• Realm store for e2e keys has landed
• Riot reboot: support timelines merge in DB to avoid to trash data as less as possible when navigating through permalinks
• New settings to choose ringtone for incoming call
• We have PR templates also

SimpleMatrix

As I currently have less time for actual coding I am planning out the SimpleMatrix Design. You can find the Images of the Design (and a PDF file) at https://gitlab.com/Nordgedanken/simplematrixredesignimagesFeel free to also join #SimpleMatrix:matrix.ffslfl.net to give feedback.

Synapse

• This week our focus has been to work through some final bugs blocking 0.34.0 which will be our first official python 3 release. Expect a RC rsn. For a sneak peak see this week's Matrix Live video at the top!

Auf Wiedersehen…

In one month from now, many Matrix-acolytes, including myself, will be at 35c3. If you'll be there, come chat to us in #matrix-35c3:matrix.org!

A little delay to the release of this week's TWIM, expect us to resume normal schedule on Friday.

Spec & Foundation

• Two workshops happened with the Foundation lawyers to work on MSC1318 - basically fleshing out a proposal for the details of the foundation governance in terms of how the Guardians (i.e. directors of the foundation board) should interact with the Core Spec Team to act as a back-stop - and working out how to port the MSC (once finished) into formal Articles of Association & adjunct documents. We'll get the workshop notes written up as a rewrite of MSC1318 very shortly.
• New MSCs from vdH on:
  • MSC1721 Rename m.login.cas to m.login.sso
  • MSC1730 Mechanism for redirecting to an alternative server during login
• …and an alternate to MSC1730: MSC1731 Mechanism for redirecting to an alternative server during SSO login.
• These three SSO-related MSCs are derived from work being done for a large-scale Matrix deployment for a New Vector customer which we should be able to talk about in future. Improving SSO and other auth/identity work in Matrix is vital, and needless to say we're trying to ensure all the resulting work ends up in the spec to the benefit of the whole ecosystem :)

matrix-media-repo

matrix-media-repo has received a lot of updates in the last few weeks. Although mostly bug fixes and improvements, there's added support for streaming downloads from remote servers. This is mostly useful when someone posts a 100mb video in a room: previously the media repo would download the entire thing then send it over to you. Now it'll send you the video while it also caches it.

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy has received some updates in the past few weeks - fixing minor bugs, improving documentation, adding support for additional Synapse/Riot features, etc.

Most notably (in oldest to most-recent order):

• Cadair heard you like playbooks, so he made it possible to run the playbook from another playbook. Thanks Cadair!
• some configuration renaming to make things more consistent. Most people would likely be unaffected.
• support has been added for Postgres 11. Upgrading is possible and easy (as a related success story, Aaron Raimist shared that he recently upgraded his ~40GB database)
• more flexible and more secure-by-default TLS configuration. Thanks Aaron Raimist!
• the ability to customize more parts of riot-web. Thanks Aaron Raimist!
• better control over Synapse logging. Thanks Aaron Raimist!
• the ability to set up a public server and the ability to make use of Synapse's \\"auto-join\\" feature. Until now, the playbook was only suited for setting up a private server, but with this, setting up public servers is now a possibility. Thanks @anadahz

I'm quite happy that the playbook is getting more contributions from others now and is improving in such diverse ways!

Additionally, the #matrix-docker-ansible-deploy:devture.com support room in Matrix is now bridged to the #matrix-docker-ansible-deploy IRC Freenode channel, making it easier for people to get support when they don't have a working homeserver.

libQMatrixClient

the work on lazy-loading in libQMatrixClient has advanced to the point when client authors may start trying to integrate it in their applications (welcome to #qmatrixclient:matrix.org for details - it's a bit rough around the edges yet).

Spectral

SMSMatrix

SMSMatrix now has a room (#smsmatrix:matrix.org). SMSMatrix is a simple bridge between Matrix and SMS, developed by tijder. You install an android app and register a bot account which will invite you to direct chats under the name of anyone who sends you an SMS, which will then act as a normal SMS conversation.

Riot

• Android rewrite is continuing in Kotlin - lots of infrastructure work over the last few weeks
• E2E key backups landed in Riot/iOS develop (but no UI yet, as we finalise the implementation first on Riot/Web)
• E2E key backups also landed in Riot/Web develop (but with placeholder UI)
• E2E key backups in dev on Riot/Android too (using Realm for storage!)
• Lots of work from uhoreg on E2E cross-signing
• Work on the Riot/Web redesign paused for a week due to other commitments but as of Nov 26th we're back on the case again, making up for lost time.

Synapse

• Py3 is finished, other than Debian packages - ongoing debate on whether they should use a virtualenv or depend on debian dependencies, and who should maintain them in a Py3 world…
• Lots of running around on final Py3 bugs

matrix-appservice-purple

Modular

• Modular now has full support for Custom DNS (letting you point your own SRV records at it)
• Lots of work on a migration tool to allow folks to easily shift Matrix accounts between servers, as well as (in future) migrations from HipChat, Slack & others.

That's it!

Matrix Live S3E04

mxisd v1.2.0 released

A new stable version of mxisd is out: v1.2.0. It comes with:

• The ultimate identity store that lets you run any command on the system to fetch info, making it the most generic yet. The sky is now your limit!
• The ability to send email notifications about room invites when done using a Matrix ID regardless if their users is already provisioned on synapse, using emails found in an Identity store. Targeted at onboarding/migration to Matrix for any org/corp.

Spec

TWIM: five(!) new MSCs so far this week, including a long-awaited MSC for displaying math(s) in messages: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1722

maubot management UI

The maubot management UI is now ready, which means you should be able to install, update and configure plugins with just the UI.

matrix-appservice-purple

I've been working on matrix-appservice-purple, and the community immediately rallied around and helped me get it into shape. We've got automated builds for both the bridge and the libpurple binding modules. In features land, group chats are now working at a basic level and I will be working on supporting profiles next.
#purple-bridge:half-shot.uk is now a room where you can tell me why your favorite protocol doesn't work with the bridge. (It's also used for updates.)

Informo

A couple of SCS (Specs Changes Submissions) have been merged into the Informo specs, notably SCS #2 which introduces a complete technical description of the network's nodes and their expected behaviour, and SCS #4 which changes the duration of the call for public review period, shrinking it from 14 days to 7 days, in order to speed specs work up while letting a decent amount of time for people to give a look at new SCSs and voice their concerns.

Quaternion

aside from mundane bugfixing, Quaternion's timeline scrolling has been improved in the master branch. Along with that, the native scrollbar can now be used instead of the shuttle scroller that is loved by some and equally hated by some others. Unfortunately, all that work has a side-effect that under some circumstances the timeline backlog is no more loaded. This will be fixed later this week.
Together with the ongoing work on refactoring room state cache and lazy-loading this makes Quaternion quite prone to regressions: unless you want to help to iron them out, it's advised to stick with Quaternion 0.0.9.3 and wait for further announcements.
By the way, the latest Quaternion release is now available in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed rolling distribution.

Synapse 0.33.9rc1

Synapse has a new release candidate - 0.33.9rc1 - If you'd like to help us test it, you can get it here.

Koma

This week in Koma, I have been working on a correct implementation of the user registration process. Currently waiting for a small issue with synapse to get fixed
For kotlin programmer who might be interested https://github.com/koma-im/koma/pull/6

f-droid.org has set up a new matrix (synapse) server

f-droid.org has set up a new matrix (synapse) server for internal conversation and to chat in #fdroid:matrix.org , which will obviously also get a :f-droid.org alias.

For now the server is private, only allowing core team members to get an account in order to keep the performance manageable.

mautrix-telegram v0.4.0

mautrix-telegram 0.4.0 release candidate was released. It's mostly a lot of bugfixes.

as of a few minutes ago, the t2bot.io Telegram bridge is updated to 0.4.0rc2

Push-to-Talk for Jitsi calls in Riot

An implementation for Push-to-Talk for Jitsi calls in Riot has now been completed and is in the review phase. This was a result of multiple weeks of work, with code changes across many different repositories. Will hopefully make a difference with background noise or many participants. Look forward to seeing it land in /develop sometime shortly! Works with both Scalar and Dimension setups.

• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/2280
• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/pull/7709

gomuks progress

gomuks development is slowly continuing. It now uses mautrix-go and I also added proper reply rendering.

More Things

Half-Shot: "The events API update for Slack was released on riot.im/develop a little while ago, which let you do more than webhooks could let you do. The UI scalar/integration manager bits were left on /develop for testing but got rolled out to /app this week."

If you have feedback about the matrix.org website (which you may be on right now!), we have a new room to collect and organise it: #matrix.org-website:matrix.org. Thank you to Aaron Raimist for much-needed chasing (of me) on this work…

This week I attended TADSummit in Lisbon to tell them about the excellent progress Matrix has been making this year. You can see more details of the conference (plus video) here: http://blog.tadsummit.com/2018/11/16/tadsummit-2018-web3/

That's all I got!

Matrix Live

Dendrite and Brendan

There's been some progress on Dendrite (?), with a couple of bug getting fixed along with some progress in the implementation of Matrix endpoints, such as the /backfill federation one (documented here), which has already been merged, and the /messages one from the client-server API (documented here) for which a pull request has been opened and is currently under review.

Python Matrix Client async API

I have pushed my asyncio wrapper of the Python matrix client api class to pypi, so I can use it in a few different projects while the PR to the Python SDK is in an unmerged state. It exposes all the methods on the MatrixHttpApi class as awaitables. https://github.com/Cadair/matrix_api_async and https://pypi.org/project/matrix-api-async/

These improvements will, in time, be merged back into the main Python SDK.

Discord bridge 0.3.0 released

• #251 Support for Postgresql and a newer SQLite3 backend!
• #182 Replace npmlog with winston, for logging to files and better logging overall.
• #221 Add support for m.sticker.
• #210 Discord-side moderation of matrix users.
• #259 Show Matrix replies as Discord embeds.
• #164 Bot will now mention name, topic and membership changes on Discord.
• #175 Add special discord keys onto m.room.member for ghosts
• #179 Add rooms to the directory when bridged.
• #220 Messages are now deleted by a users puppet rather than the bot.

Shoutout to our new member of the team, Sorunome who did a lot of the review work behind the scenes for this release. Also, thank you to everyone who submitted a PR or an issue!

matrix-puppet-slack v1.8.0 released

TWIM (but actually over the last few weeks), thanks to the efforts of a new contributor, matrix-puppet-slack v1.7.0 and v1.8.0 have been released, fixing a number of old and new issues and adding support for new types of Slack events, including bidirectional @-mentions, Slack-to-Matrix typing notifications, fixing Slack-to-Matrix image/file uploads with comments, and more! The matrix-puppet-bridge projects have gotten relatively quiet over the past year or so, but there's still plenty of bridges with plenty of features to implement and plenty of bugs to fix (and, even more importantly, bugs to report!) for any would-be-contributors who'd like to use a trusted Matrix homeserver as their double-puppetting Slack/iMessage/Facebook/GroupMe/iChat/Skype/Hangouts/Signal/Tox client from which to brag to their friends on the other platforms about how great Matrix is.

maubot management UI progress

The maubot management UI has progressed well, but isn't quite ready yet. I think it should be usable by Next Week in Matrix. It can be used to set up and configure a maubot instance and plugins. Once it's ready, it should be possible to do everything except installing maubot itself through the UI: installing and updating plugins, adding matrix clients, configuring plugin instances, viewing logs, etc.

HK Bot is an anti-abuse bot

HK Bot is an anti-abuse bot for public Matrix chatrooms. This is a bot that really shouldn't exist, but since some people just like to make others' lives more difficult, here we are. The purpose of this bot is twofold. It can automatically oversee rooms and respond to abuse, based on programmable pattern rules, providing a stop-gap measure in case no human moderators are nearby. It can also automate some tedious tasks via its command interface, the primary one being the complete redaction of all of an abuser's messages. HK Bot is still under construction and contains dangerous features. Use with caution.

X-SAMPA to IPA bot

I'll just have to make it a bit more configurable, but then I'll throw the source up When making constructed languages and talking about linguistics, it's nice to get an easilly readable IPA representation of a word, but it's really hard to write IPA, which is why x-sampa exists as a way to input IPA with a normal keyboard!

Informo

A handful of SCS (Specs Changes Submissions) to the Informo specifications have been happening over the last week and a half, with some of them still open to public review for at least a few days before being merged into the specs. The list of SCS open to review can be found here, and people can track new SCS and status changes to existing ones through our specs bot that's living in #discuss:weu.informo.network ?

Fractal

I increased message rendering performance in the room history. Also the history doesn't move it's position anymore when older messages are loaded, which results in a much better experience. All the changes are in master, but we didn't make a new release.

Video intro to Matrix and Riot in French

I have made a video about Riot which could fit in the Guides on matrix.org. It's for beginners, in French. It's 6 months old, but I just uploaded it on youtube. Also it's available on peertube.

More Things This Week

Half-Shot also continued work on bridging via libpurple: "I've nearly got group chats working, with invites (and hopefully people joining and leaving them showing up properly) as well as user's having profiles."

Work continues on Koma:

Since the last TWIM update, koma is updated to kotlin 1.3, experimental coroutines are replaced with stable ones. The changes are being tested and should be merged soon. A new contributor has joined, so expect development to speed up a bit.

FIN

The Matrix.org Foundation

in preparation for the upcoming Matrix 1.0 release, we've been moving ahead with the rest of the open governance plan – and we're happy to announce that as of a few hours ago, the initial incarnation of The Matrix.org Foundation exists!
Watch this space over the coming weeks as we announce the Guardians and finish bootstrapping the Foundation into its final long-term form! Meanwhile, any questions: come ask in #matrix-spec-process:matrix.org

Hello Matrix

Just wanted to let everyone know that changes are coming to the server list: I've put up a notice on the site that starting Nov 16th I will only show a curated list of servers I would recommend to join.
This reduces the workload for me quite a bit and avoids me becoming some kind of arbiter on what encompasses the Matrix universe… I think it is also more useful for users who are looking for a server to join.
And there is always matrixstats.org for those who are looking for a more complete-ish list of known homeservers.

if you find someone willing to take up the project of a more automated, self-service and complete list at a later date, I am more than willing to hand over all the stuff I currently have and might also lend a helping hand myself (if I have time then).

maubot management API

The maubot management API I mentioned last week is now mostly ready. It should be possible to use it to set up a maubot instance and plugins without filling the database manually. There's no UI yet though, so it still means curling manually.
The management API also supports the fancy plugin reloading stuff which was the > reason I rewrote maubot in python: You can POST an updated plugin to the API and it'll install it without having to restart.
I also made a bunch of plugins while working on the API that I used to test the API: a dice rolling/calculator bot, a bot that replies with the MXC URI of images you send it, a simple echo/ping bot and an xkcd bot

Next steps are making the management UI, a few more plugins and making setup and development instructions so that other people could run it and make plugins

Announcing the Fractal Hackfest in Seville

there's going to be a Fractal hackfest in Seville in December https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/26/fractal-hackfest-in-seville

matrix-client-core

My lightweight bot/client framework, matrix-client-core, received its first tag ever. Version 0.0.1 is relatively stable, and lies on the doorstep of some refactoring work (ongoing) which should keep the master branch backwards compatible for now, but could make things less stable as I add new commits.

[it has] been there all along, quietly powering FAQBot and all of my bots. ? Maybe I have failed to explicitly indicate it as such up until now. (oops)

Synapse 0.33.8

mxisd v1.2.0-rc.1

mxisd v1.2.0-rc.1 is out with support of all features for the Exec Identity Store, allowing connectivity to totally custom/arbitrary backends. Feedback is extremely welcome!

Half-Shot interfaces with libpurple

I've been reviving node-purple (a library for communicating with libpurple) and making a brand new bridge service to make use of it called matrix-appservice-purple. Today I got it to the point where you could link your XMPP account to your matrix user and have it bridge PMs over.
Work is ongoing to make it bridge group chats, profiles, contacts lists and support other protocols better in the coming weeks

NSFW image detection API (on Matrix)

My avatar returned less than 1% probability of being NSFW, which I was actually a little offended by.

To talk more about the bot and it's development, chat in #nsfw:encom.eu.org.

Gaming Discord bridging

All but 3 channels on the linux gaming discord have now been bridged to matrix.

Other thoughts

• kitsune is forced by his employers to use Viber, so is thinking of creating a Matrix bridge.
• I spent some time this week repeatedly installing Synapse, then working with Stefan to create a new, hopefully definitive installation guide (available soon). I can also personally recommend Slavi's matrix-docker-ansible-deploy project, this is a great way to get a Synapse installation (and more!) running.
• lately in #twim:matrix.org posters have been providing much clearer and atomic updates, which I like a lot

Matrix Live, season 3 episode 2

Farewell

We have a LOT of updates this week, so let's dive straight in!

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now has a self-check command that can help diagnose various configuration problems with the setup (DNS records being misconfigured, firewall ports not being open, etc).

One more matrix-docker-ansible-deploy update: the playbook can now set up Whatsapp-bridging via mautrix-whatsapp. Thanks to @izissise!

Dimension

Dimension has received quite a lot of updates over the last week. Here's what's hot off the press:

• 4 new bridges can be self-hosted and managed in Dimension: Telegram, Webhooks, Slack, and Gitter.
• 3 new widgets are available: Grafana, TradingView, and Spotify.
• Add your own custom bots for people to add to their rooms.
• A dark theme has been added and is automatically applied if you use the dark theme in Riot.
• The overall UI has been updated to be slightly more modern and less bright orange.
• Various bug fixes and improvements (is it even possible to have a changelog without this?)

As per usual, if you find any bugs or have ideas for things to add to Dimension feel free to come by #dimension:t2bot.io

mautrix-telegram

mautrix-telegram now uses the non-ORM part of SQLAlchemy for database tables that are used often. That change made the CPU usage on the t2bot.io instance drop from ~100% to ~7%

TravisR, who hosts the bridge on t2bot.io, reports that the bridge is now effectively instantaneous!

The bottleneck has returned to being synapse instead of the bridge

Discord Bridge 0.3.0-rc1

From the release notes, this is just a subset of the features:

• #251 Support for Postgresql and a newer SQLite3 backend!
• #182 Replace npmlog with winston, for logging to files and better logging overall.
• #221 Add support for m.sticker.
• #210 Discord-side moderation of matrix users.
• #259 Show Matrix replies as Discord embeds.
• #164 Bot will now mention name, topic and membership changes on Discord.
• #175 Add special discord keys onto m.room.member for ghosts

Shoutout to our new member of the team, @Sorunome who did a lot of the review work behind the scenes for this release. Also, thank you to everyone who submitted a PR or an issue!

Slack Bridge 0.2.0 released!

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-slack/releases/tag/0.2.0

Spectral

Spectral now provides an AppImage along with Flatpak build. Also, thanks to the notification codes from nheko, Spectral can show icons in notifications, and now enters corresponding room when clicking on the notification. It also gains several UI/UX improvements.
P.s. I have resubmitted Spectral to Flathub.

FAQBot

FAQBot has been set free at last! Find its code at https://gitlab.com/Matrixcoffee/FAQBot, and its room at #faqbot:matrix.org.

Also, if anyone wants to help write answers for FAQBot, https://gitlab.com/Matrixcoffee/matrix-knowledge-base is the place.

New communities

we just bridged the linux-gaming community from discord to matrix, with a matrix community and individually bridged rooms/channels and all main room is #general_linuxgaming:matrix.orgcommunity is +linux-gaming:matrix.org

i've set up an instance of matrix-appservice-discord, which is bridging some select rooms from the linux-gaming discord server to +linux-gaming:matrix.org

The Linux Gaming community has gotten a proper matrix community (+linux-gaming:matrix.org) with a fair few rooms in it, all of which are bridged to a discord channel via my matrix-appservice-discord instance.

#prismo:matrix.org and #anfora:matrix.org have also been bridged to discord.

Matrix for Ansible notifications

After over a month of waiting, the matrix notification module has been merged on to ansible devel which will be released as ansible 2.8 early next year. Src: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/45823

Karma plugin for maubot

I made a karma plugin for maubot. It's a bit like the karma plugin ivar has, but you give karma by up/downvoting messages instead of arbitrary names.

I've started working on a management API and interface for maubot now, so soon it should be possible to use maubot without setting up the database manually.

mxisd v1.2.0-beta.3

mxisd v1.2.0-beta.3 is out with the start of a brand new Identity store based on arbitrary executable, to connect to anything and everything. Authentication is implemented at the moment (see doc). Feedback is very welcome to improve as much as possible for v1.2.0

MSC1695 Message Edits

Quaternion translations: German and Polish now available

First couple of translations - German and Polish - have made it to the released Quaternion 0.0.9.3 - thanks to krombel and krkk for their contributions! Swedish and Russian translations are in the works.

Fluffychat

The first stable release of the #matrix messenger #fluffychat is out now. ? Get it from: https://www.fluffy.chat
Thanks to all who have helped me. Thanks to regionetz for hosting the ubports.chat homeserver, thanks to @matrix for the awesome work, thanks to @Ubports for this awesome platform and to fabiyamada, advocatux, wayneoutthere, lionelb, Diogo, mithgarthsormr, mark, and all the awesome people from the community!!
With your help, Ubuntu Touch is still alive and has got a new stable messenger!

Informo: new bot for spec changes

This week, vabd reports:

We made a Matrix bot that shouts about updates to change submissions to Informo's specifications. It basically processes all changes made to the list of labels for each issue and PR of a GitHub repository's, and generates a notice message that it sends to the configured room(s). We made it because we wanted the people that are interested in Informo to know in real time about any change made to the state of proposals, along with the calls for public reviews. We just set it up in #discuss:weu.informo.network, and published its source code along with a built binary here: https://github.com/Informo/specs-bot
It might also be worth noticing that, although we designed it to shout about updates to Informo's specifications proposals, we also made it compatible with other projects, e.g. the Matrix specs

Push-to-talk functionality with Jitsi on Riot

I've been working on global push-to-talk functionality with Jitsi on Riot. I've got toggle on/off functionality working, but still trying for walkie-talkie mode. To do so, I need to get this library working with Riot: https://github.com/WilixLead/iohook
If anyone has experience with native Node modules and/or Electron, please hit me up! @andrewm:amorgan.xyz

Greetings from Mozfest

This is the start of Season Three of Matrix Live. Matrix Live seasons are variable in length, based on the data available so far. From this season, Matrix Live with change the format slightly, based on feedback. The videos will try to be a bit more interesting, varied, and deep. With this video being the start of a new season, it was meant to be more substantive with us talking to Mozfest-ites, but I lost track of time, so this shorter but still energetic video will hopefully convey the idea.

Bridges and SDKs

Slack Bridge 0.2.0-rc1

We've got a Slack RC out at long last! Rejoice! It's absolutely massive and full of features.

Integrations manager > sign into slack > click your channel > ??? > channel bridged :)

This is the first release of the Slack bridge. 0.1.0 has been the version number for previous efforts but was never an official release.

maubot Python

The maubot Python rewrite I twimmed two weeks ago is now complete. The plugin system seems to work well and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to implement proper plugin reloading now. Next I'll implement plugin config storage and some way to manage maubot and plugins (maybe a plugin to manage plugins?)

Clients

Riot Web 0.17, Riot Android 0.8.18: Lazy Loading

Riot Android 0.8.18 is also available from the Play Store and F-Droid, with Lazy Loading option available in the Labs menu (but still has a few bugs left).

Riot iOS meanwhile is busy implementing incremental server-side E2E key backups, and there's generally been a huge amount of work on E2E encryption UX across the board in preparation for all-new E2E on Web and iOS.  More details will be coming soon!

With this done, Riot is now getting a lot more attention on the impending redesign, with Bruno starting to merge code to the experimental branch.

Quaternion 0.0.9.3

After being in RC for a week, Quaternion 0.0.9.3 is ready and will be released over the weekend. Most importantly, you can now translate it into your language! Just head over to https://lokalise.co/public/730769035bbc328c31e863.62506391/, register (you can optionally reuse your GitHub account), ask in #qmatrixclient:matrix.org to add your language to the list (if it's not there yet) and start translating!

Coffee on Matrix Console for Android

I have decided to take up maintainership of the Matrix Console for Android client. This is still the only multi-account capable Android client, but it is unmaintained and growing long in tooth. In particular, the API endpoints it uses may be removed from Synapse soon. I will not be developing new features for it, but I will integrate reasonable patches if others want to take that on. My own goals are to remove GCM and analytics, and get it added to F-Droid. And of course to switch to the latest API. As part of this work, I have been fighting Gradle and its bugs to get matrix-android-sdk to build together with matrix-android-console as a git submodule, so it's no longer necessary to inject the precompiled sdk into the source code. I did not win yet.

FluffyChat stable release creeps closer

nheko

Featured on Mozilla Hacks blog

Raiden Network uses Matrix for transport - this article explains it

The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It's complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token.

Synapse 0.33.7

Synapse on kubernetes update

tracking the latest synapse release on my K8s optimized image. Got no real time to work on things due to deadlines at work, but that should end come November, so expect more odd Ruby stuff after that point.

mxisd v1.2.0-beta.2

mxisd v1.2.0-beta.2 is out, fixing bugs found during beta.1

Cadair at GSOC

I attended the GSOC mentor summit. I had some great conversations with people who are using matrix and with people about bridging in different chat services. A lot of matrix stickers all vanished off the overloaded sticker table. I have lots of ideas for GSOC next year, and plan to try and get many more community projects involved. Finally, I dont need to eat chocolate for a month.

GSOC chocolate: GCHOC

Until next week

Matrix Spec updates

• MSC1695 Half-Shot has a newly released proposal relating to Message Edits:"The key difference to this proposal is that it's only the event schema which is based off the relates stuff. It does NOT do any kind of aggregations but simply is a format to allow bridges/clients to specify edits in the metadata."
• MSC1693 Erik has been thinking about state res v2 in the case of rejected events

libQMatrixClient 0.4.0

libQMatrixClient 0.4.0 has just been released: CS API 0.4.0, local echo, caching avatars to disk and more - check the release notes at https://github.com/QMatrixClient/libqmatrixclient/releases/v0.4.0!

Informo

The Informo specifications documentation is out! ? It now lives right here: https://specs.informo.network
As a reminder, we were working on "phase 1" of this documentation, which goal was to outline how Informo was going to work. This is basically the foundation for a more complete technical documentation, which shall come later.
The idea is to enable people to give it a look as soon as possible, and to enable them to contribute to Informo as early in the design process as possible. The spec is entirely open, with a process for contributions documented and all its source files available on GitHub here: https://github.com/Informo/specs
The online version I initially linked is a live version from the repo's master branch, which is updated each time commits are pushed to it (including on merging a PR).
If people have any question or remark regarding the specs, or Informo in a general manner, we'll gladly answer them in #discuss:weu.informo.network (or on the #informo IRC channel on Freenode, which is bridged to the Matrix room)! ?

mxisd v1.2.0-beta.1 (beta release)

mxisd got a new beta release v1.2.0-beta.1.
It adds the ability to send email notification about room invites to existing accounts in Identity store that might not have been provisioned in the homeserver yet as users never logged in, or for users' profile that are not auto-populated wiht 3PIDs. This is especially targeted for onboarding/enrolling times when adopoting Matrix in groups/corporations or for custom setups.
We would love to hear about your experience with it!

matrix-trello-bot

matrix-trello-bot has received quite the overhaul. It's gone from a small bot that had pre-determined notifications for board activity to a much more capable bot. The bot now supports managing boards (yes, you can create a board from within Matrix!), lists, and cards including creating, moving, archiving, assigning, and querying.

On top of all that, the bot respects that not every room will want to receive every possible notification and offers commands to pick and choose which events it should notify about on a per-board basis. Feel free to give it a spin and check out the massive help menu with !trello help. Please send bugs and suggestions to GitHub :)

Clients

Riot 0.16.6 Released

Fixes only these two issues:

• Firefox private mode being broken > (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/2195)
• Breakage when mixing /app and /develop use (issue #7432)

As both fixes are not relevant for electron, we didn't release 0.16.6 as the electron app, but rest assured 0.17 will of course be released as electron.

Fluffychat

• User profiles
• Design improvements
• Audioplayer in chat
• Videoplayer in chat (only audio at the moment)
• Imageviewer
• Edit chat aliases
• Edit chat settings and permissions
• Kick, ban and unban users
• Edit user permissions
• New invite page
• Display and edit chat topics
• Change chat avatar
• Change user avatar
• Edit phone numbers
• Edit email addresses
• Display and edit archived chats
• New add-chat and add-contact pages
• Display contacts and find contacts with their phone number or email address
• Discover public chats on the user's homeserver
• Registration (currently only working with ubports.chat and NOT with matrix.org due captchas)
• Register and login with phone number
• Edit identity-server
• Add in-app viewer for the privacy policy

Construct Docker image

Construct has a new docker image (https://github.com/matrix-construct/docker-construct) which will ease the process of deployment

Translations for Quaternion

Quaternion is now localisable! The web platform for translation will be set up in the nearest days; meanwhile those who can't wait can just take the repo, look how the German translation is made and copy!

That's all we can tell you!

Bridges

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/releases/tag/0.11.2 is just a hotfix release containing a few things we fixed in develop so yay.

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-node/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#v035 is a long overdue update that just updates dependencies so we are no longer exposing lots of vulnerabilities
Updated body-parser, express, morgan and request packages to fix security vulnerabilities.

matrix-appservice-bridge is out! Bundled in this version are major updates to dependencies (to stop the warnings), a logging component for quick setup of pretty winston logs and a provisoner "validator" to allow bridge admins to curate which bridges can be linked into the same room to stop the dreaded double bridge issue.
More details can be found at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge/releases/tag/1.7.0

Informo news project

Hey there, here's a quick update to let you know that we're making great progress towards the completion of phase 1 of Informo's specifications' documentation (i.e. general outline without going to much in depth into the technical specifications)! I've also updated the board to cut the big "Basic spec" task down into smaller tasks to give a more precise insight of our current progress
Once that phase 1 is done we'll publish the whole thing and migrate our work to a public GitHub repository so people can get to know Informo a bit better and contribute towards making the doc better if they want

Riot

Go see the latest changes and make sure to start using room member Lazy Loading with the latest matrix-js-sdk.

Libraries

I am writing a Qt wrapper for Olm. It has APIs similar to python-olm

libQMatrixClient is nearing its release 0.4.0, with low-level support of CS API (coincidentally) 0.4.0 added this week. Another very useful addition is caching avatar images to the disk, not only in memory, relieving the network from dozens of extra requests when a client powered by the library is restarted. All thanks for the avatar caching PR go to Black Hat!

SDKs

My gomatrix fork is now mautrix-go and the basic client API stuff in mautrix-python is starting to be usable enough for me to start the rewrite of maubot in Python.
For a bit of background, maubot is a dynamic plugin-based bot system. It's currently written in Go, but due to many limitations in the Go plugin system, I decided to rewrite it in Python. matrix-python-sdk doesn't have asyncio or a maintainer, so I decided to make a new framework that combines my existing mautrix-appservice-python framework with a more generic client API layer. (tulir)

Homeservers

mxhsd work has resumed via a new project, Gridepo, which will be a Matrix/Grid dual-stack server. While mxhsd focused on researching the protocol and reverse-engineering the spec, Gridepo will follow whatever is specced in its Matrix compatible mode.

we've been focusing on fixing a whole host of federation bugs to improve reliability and latency. Additionally we've squashed some py3 bugs, improved lazy loading and been working hard in the background to improve our CI infrastructure. Finally, we cleaned up the Docker file, the image is now half the size of 0.33.5.1's standing at 58 MB.

As ever, you can get the new update here or any of the sources mentioned at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse. Note, Synapse is now available from PyPI.

DevOps and Hosting

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy has received some more improvements lately. They're mostly about the ability to tweak things affecting performance: Synapse cache factor configuration, the ability to enable/disable user presence tracking. The logging situation has also been improved for all Docker containers, so that their output would not get logged twice (once by systemd's journal, once by Docker) - something which was previously causing unpredictably-high disk usage for long-running containers.

Updated the K8s tweaked packaging for Synapse 0.33.6 (And added a preliminary Python 3 version there as well)

swedneck is hosting riot on IPFS: https://riot.swedneck.xyz, see also https://riot-all.swedneck.xyz for all the versions currently hosted there.

Bots

Through use of the https://emoncms.org API, the makerspace I help run now has power monitoring statistics available from within matrix.

Rooms

#synapse:matrix.org became an official Matrix room! It also had a small face lift, changing from "Synapse Community" to "Synapse Admins", hopefully making its purpose and intended audience clearer.

That's all for now

DSN Traveller

In summary, I could show that Matrix has few large but many small servers. Large servers reduce the overall network load, but a significant fraction of the load is concentrated in them. Introducing more small servers would further increase the load concentration. The Matrix event graph as a Conflict-Free Replicated Data Type showed to be well-suited for reliable messaging and history synchronization, and is applicable beyond Matrix.
I'm now working on a scientific paper on the results, which will boil down the more than 80 pages of the thesis to something much more digestible. ? You'll hear it in TWIM when that is finished!

Room for discussions: #dsn-traveller:matrix.org
Website wtih more information on the DSN Traveller: https://dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu/

I'm currently in the process of trying to secure funding for a doctorate with Matrix as the topic, as that's where I can proof experience.

#open-science:matrix.vgorcum.com

Half-Shot IRC Connection Tracker

The IRC connection tracker has had yet more code and love applied to it. The headline changes are:

• We now have a fully working IRC client that can connect to an IRCd, join channels and chat. These client's persist over > the lifetime of the service.
• There is a tool included with the service ircctl which allows you to spawn and use connections en masse. It also lets > you list the state of the currently connected clients.
• Work has just begun on a client library for connecting this up to the bridge, but should be swiftly completed thanks to…
• A brand new spec website in the works for describing the protocol (thanks Brendan for pointing me in the right direction)

Fractal

This week in Fractal, more refactoring and small bugfixes. About 50 commits by 5 people, one of which made their first contributions this week (congrats Rasmus!).

The room history refactor I was working on for fractal is upstream, now we can start to improve how messages are displayed and make the loading of older messages better.

Synapse

0.33.5.1 is an interesting release. On the one hand it contains the usual bug fixes and performance improvements of a point release, but it also our first versioned release where monolith installs can be run under Python 3.5 and 3.6! Python 3 support is very much in beta, so please be cautious but if you would like to try running under a py3 environment we'd love to get your feedback.

it is functional, but much like python3 support it is still a work in progress, hence the larger size

Matrix on Hyperboria

I spent last night setting up hypertrix.ovh, a matrix server only listening on Hyperboria, a cjdns based end-to-end encrypted IPv6 overlay mesh network. I'd be glad if someone could be found to peer and federate with me there! Registration is open, but your client needs to be connected to Hyperboria to be able to talk to the server.

Seaglass

WebKit has the advantage of being super super fast on macOS, and also very low overheads
The current approach uses Cocoa NSTableViews and it's horrible because Apple clearly couldn't decide how they wanted them to work and therefore it's not very optimised
Moving to WebKit only adds about 16mb to the RAM usage and redraws far faster than the NSTableViews can when resizing etc, and we'll save a lot on the text formatting too which currently is a bit of a mess

Cadair and Half-Shot on the Slack Bridge

matrix-appservice-slack is a Node project, built on matrix-appservice-bridge, which is designed to bridge messages and metadata between Slack and Matrix. These updates:

• Improves pills substitutions to use the new slack mentions
• Add Gitter style edit bridging
• Adds a config option to specify the directory the user-store.db and room-store.db files go in
• Converts slack snippets to inline code dumps in matrix

ma1uta tests for client

Spectral

I added elevation shadows for some components, such as message bubble, panels, etc.

Native Tor onion service enabled for matrix.org and riot.im

We just turned on the new native Tor onion service support for https://t.co/vidAnPoIo2 & https://t.co/UIjS6gDkvf in cloudflare; feedback welcome! https://t.co/keXC4bjo5F pic.twitter.com/nTRmGHCt8P

— Matrix (@matrixdotorg) September 28, 2018

Spec

Riot

• Lazy loading members is now on by default on riot.im/develop - reducing Riot's RAM by 3-5x.  Please give it a go and test it before we ship it in Riot 0.17 (probably next week) so we can iron out any last bugs (which will probably look like user profiles going missing)
• Lazy loading also ships by default in Riot/iOS in Testflight 0.7.4 - if you want in on Testflight let us know in #riot-ios:matrix.org and we'll share an invite link!
• Lazy loading in Riot/Android coming real soon now; it's behind a labs flag on the develop branch if you want to experiment.
• Travis has started attacking the Riot/Web 'First Impressions' project (starting with unbreaking onboarding in Riot/Web when GDPR consent is enabled)
• Lots and lots of UX work from Nad on E2E, Communities, Onboarding and the overall redesign, complete with a redesign workshop with Jouni.
• Aiming for end of Oct for first cut of redesign to be live as an experimental branch on riot.im.
• Lots and lots of E2E implementation work in general; backups, cross-signing, and verification.

The end is nigh!

https://youtu.be/zo4IH4nUQ9w

Nheko 0.6.0 released!

Features

• Support for sending & receiving markdown formatted messages.
• Import/Export of megolm session keys. (Incompatible with Riot)
• macOS: The native emoji picker can be used.
• Context menu option to show the raw text message of an event.
• Rooms with unread messages are marked in the room list.
• Clicking on a user pill link will open the user profile.

Spec Proposals: E2E Cross-signing and bi-directional key verification

Also, although it wasn't this week, I don't think that we have previously announced the proposal for bi-directional key verification using QR codes: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1544

Jeon

In ma1uta's words:

Jeon is a set of the java interfaces and classes which describes the Matrix API.

• client-api: r0.4.0-1 corresponds to the r0.4.0 C2S API.
• application-api: r0.1.0-1 corresponse to the r0.1.0 AS API,
• push-api: r0.1.0-1 corresponds to the r0.1.0 PUSH API,
• identity-api: r0.1.0-1 corresponds to the r0.1.0 IS API.
• All artefacts available from the Maven Central Repository.

Major changes:

• Full support for the corresponding Matrix api.
• Changed version for displaying the Matrix api version.
• Added support to the asynchronous responses.

Also updated the swagger schemas generated from the code:

• https://ma1uta.github.io/swagger/c2s.json - C2S API
• https://ma1uta.github.io/swagger/as.json - AS API
• https://ma1uta.github.io/swagger/push.json - PUSH API
• https://ma1uta.github.io/swagger/id.json - IS API

And the first hotfix: application-api r0.1.0-2 with fixed url (/transactions has been changes to the _matrix/app/v1/transactions). And this release will break all AS because synapse sends transactions to the old url.

VoIP signalling support has landed in libQMatrixClient

After some pretty long time of being in a PR/fork, VoIP signalling support has landed in libQMatrixClient! Many thanks to mariogrip (the founder of UBports) for the initial code and to delijati (a developer behind uMatriks) for getting it to work with the most recent library.
The actual VoIP stack does not come included, client developers have to take whatever WebRTC implementation is available for their platform and glue the pieces together. However, as the example of uMatriks shows, this now becomes relatively easy if your platform is on good terms with WebRTC (like UBports). I look forward to further work with UBports community on keeping this platform a first-class Matrix citizen.

Matrique is now Spectral

FluffyChat featured in OpenStore

Matrix Corporal

Matrix Corporal has received some updates over the past few weeks since its initial release: a couple of additional HTTP APIs for retrieving/destroying user access tokens; more consistency with the Matrix Client-Server specification when it comes to error responses; faster reconciliation for user accounts that are joined to many/large rooms.

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now also helps you set up service discovery as per the .well-known Matrix specification.

jcg ansible PR for matrix notifications

Seaglass E2E + self-update

Seaglass end-to-end encryption support is now complete, including device verification and blacklisting, key sharing requests, key import and export (which should be compatible with Riot) and re-requesting keys

I'm also working on auto-updating Seaglass with Aaron Raimist's help in addition to finishing E2E support :-)

ma1uta jmsdk

I have released a new version of the java client (https://github.com/ma1uta/jmsdk/tree/master/client-sdk). The new client works is asynchronous mode, each method doesn't block the thread and return the CompletableFuture (promise in java). Then you can block thread to get the response or build a asynchronous promises chain.

with the Curve25519 key agreement (http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/324) and will try make a pure java implementation of the olm/megolm. Just for fun. :)

synapse-purge

The synapse-purge tool allows homeserver admins to free disk space by purging old room events from the synapse database. It is an alternative for synpurge which currently does not work correctly.

Configuration is minimalistic at the moment. Meaning it purges all remote rooms on the server with a globally configured preservation period.

synapse

0.33.5rc1 is now available, with the big news being the inclusion of support for Python 3.5 and 3.6! Hawkowl's Py3 has merged for monoliths and is working pretty well, looking like 2-3x RAM improvement. Please help us test!

Erik's state compressor tool is pretty much finished, we've been starting to run it on things and it reduces disk usage for the state group table by at least 10x.

The only catch is that it's quite DB heavy whilst it runs, so we haven't run it on Matrix.org yet.

Fractal

refactoring of the history and other parts is going on in the master branch of Fractal. We also cleaned up build and dependency related bits.

maubot and sedbot

I made some updates to maubot and fixed most of the sedbot (S. Edbot) issues people had reported.

I might also make some useful bots soon

Riot Web

Lots of final bug hunting for lazy loading - this is taking longer than you might expect because we're doing end-to-end CI everywhere.

Lots of work on E2E, Dave has been working on:

UI for e2e key backup that's waiting for some lower level bits
and hopefully our e2e core code is moving from asm.js to webassembly making it, by current estimations, significantly faster.

Nad has joined us to help with design bandwidth and is working on the onboarding flows for the redesign as well as fixing all the UX issues in Communities!

Riot Mobile + Mobile SDKs

Bridges

Modular

Finally

Dimension

Clients

Fluffychat

• Search chats
• Chat avatars
• Search users in chats
• Security & Privacy settings:

1. Disable typing notifications
2. Auto-accept invitations

• New message status:

1. Sending: Activity indicator
2. Sent: Little cloud
3. Received: Tick
4. Seen by someone: Usericon

• Display stickers
• Minor UI improvements
• FluffyChat now automatically opens the link to the matrix.org consens
• Updated translations

Seaglass

Seaglass has had a substantial rewrite to the room cache to help improve reliability and reduce crashes, better thumbnail behaviour on inline images, various tiny visual tweaks, in-window blending, support for encryption key sharing requests for E2E rooms.

Rendering performance has been massively increased (if you ignore the occasional bug). Resizing the window shouldn't be so slow anymore and a lot of avatar image operations are no longer repeated unnecessarily

Other than that this week has mostly featured lots and lots of bug fixes, hopefully lots of crashes fixed.

Quaternion

Quaternion's master branch is alive again - it's been prone to crashes in the last two weeks, now it shouldn't. Feel free to try the new room list organised by tag!

SimpleMatrix

SimpleMatrix now supports Basic messages sending (with Commonmark) and basic receiving of messages.

miniVector

There's now a second matrix client available in F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.lavadip.miniVector/

This is a fork of Riot Android done by hrjet, f-droid release done by me. It's removing mostly jitsi group call functionality and some other smaller stuff. In doing so it manages to require far less permissions and is also only 12 MB in size instead of riots 20 MB.

Matrique

Matrique gained alpha support for multiple accounts

Riot Web 0.16.4 released

Full changelogs as always are split over the three projects which make up Riot/Web:

• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#changes-in-0164-2018-09-10
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#changes-in-0134-2018-09-10
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-js-sdk/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#changes-in-0110-rc1-2018-09-07

SDKs and Libraries

libQMatrixClient ecosystem

libQMatrixClient now has a pkg-config file to further ease clients building on Linux systems, as well as more convenient API to track read markers if all users, not just of the local one.

matrix-js-sdk v0.11.0 released

• Support for lazy loading members. This should improve performance for users who joined big rooms a lot. Pass to lazyLoadMembers = true option when calling startClient.
• MatrixClient::startClient now returns a Promise. No method should be called on the client before that promise resolves. Before this method didn't return anything.
• A new CATCHUP sync state, emitted by MatrixClient#"sync" and returned by MatrixClient::getSyncState(), when doing initial sync after the ERROR state. See MatrixClient documentation for details.
• RoomState::maySendEvent('m.room.message', userId) & RoomState::maySendMessage(userId) do not check the membership of the user anymore, only the power level. To check if the syncing user is allowed to write in a room, use Room::maySendMessage() as RoomState is not always aware of the syncing user's membership anymore, in case lazy loading of members is enabled.

Synapse

Meanwhile, Python 3 support for monolithic (non-worker) Synapses has finally landed on the develop branch, thanks to massive work from hawkowl and notafile - if you want to help us test and flush out any remaining byte/utf8 style errors, please create a virtualenv for python 3.6 or 3.5 (twisted doesn't support 3.7 yet) and point the develop branch of Synapse at it, tail the logs for ERRORs and report them via Github if/when you see them.  In practice it seems pretty stable though, and noticeably reduces RAM and speeds things up thanks to improved GC and general performance work in Python.

We've also discovered that jemalloc works very well at improving RAM usage on Python 2 under Linux (we haven't tried it on Python 3 yet) by providing a more fragmentation-resistent malloc implementation; if you are having problems with your Synapse RAM spiking up we recommend giving it a go.  All of the Matrix.org server is using it now.

Also, lots of ops work this week; Erik has prototyped a new storage strategy for state groups which shrinks storage requirements by 10x, we'll be applying this shortly to Matrix.org otherwise we're going to run out of disk space.  There was also a regression on Synapse develop on federation, where outbound requests would get stuck and never retry - this impacted the matrix.org server badly over the course of the week, but as of Friday night we have a workaround in place.  We're not aware of it affecting anyone other than the matrix.org deployment (and we haven't got to the root cause yet).

Construct homeserver progress

Added notification counts which show up in Riot now, and expanded support for g++-7 and 8 instead of just g++-6. Construct repository is found at: https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct.

IRC Connection Tracker

The project is going quite well, and is going to be used on matrix.org once production ready which will really speed up upgrades and give us near zero downtime indifferent to the size of the bridge.

At the moment the project has the ability to spin up and maintain connections, however the connections are not supporting IRC fully yet as there are bits to do on the parsing and maintaining state side. There is also work on a top-like tool to visualise and control the service outside of the bridge so we can quickly handle any oddities if they come up. Finally, it allows you to hot reload the configuration without dropping existing connections!

On the work done to support this on matrix-appservice-bridge, there is basic support for stating connections on the bridge but it's in early stages at the moment.

Spec

• experimenting with splitting out the "Room" specific bits of the spec into a dedicated section rather than being split between the CS and SS APIs;
• trying to pin down a formal grammar for room aliases
• ...and identifiers in general.

#matrix-dev

A sneak peek at Modular...

Finally, there's been a massive amount of work on the New Vector side of things to soft-launch Modular - a paid hosting platform for Matrix servers (and, in future, paid integrations).  At this point we're looking for early adopters who want a dedicated Riot+Synapse for communities or companies of 50 or more users - but don't want to have to run it themselves.  Modular takes the homeserver hosting we've already been providing for Status, TADHack and others, and turns it into a mass-market product.  The pricing for early adopters is over 5x cheaper than Slack, so if you've been dying to have a reliable, fast and expertly maintained homeserver without any of the headaches of admining one yourself, please head over to https://modular.im and give it a whirl and let us know how it goes!  This is also a great way to support Matrix development in general, as money from Modular will directly keep the core Matrix team funded to work on Matrix.  Once we're happy with the soft-launch and have incorporated any feedback we'll start yelling about it as loud as we can :)

Matrix Live

Hi all,

Ben's away today, so this TWIM is brought to you mainly in association with Cadair's TWIMbot!

Spec Activity

Meanwhile, in the community, ma1uta reports:

I am working on the jeon (java matrix api) to update it to the latest stable release. Also I changed versions of api to form rX.Y.Z-N where rX.Y.Z is a API version and N is a library version whithin API. So, I have prepared Push API (r0.1.0-1), Identity API (r0.1.0-1) and Appservice API (r0.1.0-1) for the first release and current updating the C2S API to the r0.4.0 version.

XMPP Bridging

Ma1uta has a new version of his Matrix-Xmpp bridge:

It is a double-puppet bridge which can connects the Matrix and XMPP ecosystems. Just invite the @_xmpp_master:ru-matrix.org and tell him: @_xmpp_master: connect [email protected] to connect current room with the specified conference.
You can ask about this bridge in the #matrix-jabber-java-bridge:ru-matrix.org room.
Currently supports only conferences and only m.text messages. 1:1 conversations and other message types will be later.

It works as a bot, so it is non-puppeting. Rooms can be mapped dynamically by the bot administrator(s). There is no support for 1-1 chats (yet). MxBridge is written as a multi-process application in Elixir and it should scale quite well (but don't tie me down on it ;)). https://github.com/djmaze/mxbridge

Seaglass

• Displaying stickers
• Lazy-loading room history on startup to help with performance
• Scrollback support (both forwards and backwards)
• Support for Matthew's Account (aka retries on initial sync for those of us with massive initial syncs, and general perf improvements to nicely support >2000 rooms)
• Better avatar support & cosmetics on macOS Mojave
• Encryption verification support, device blacklisting and message information
• Ability to turn encryption on in rooms
• Responding to encryption being turned on in rooms
• Paranoid mode for encryption (only send to verified devices)
• Invitation support (both in UI and /invite)

Matrique

Fractal

Fractal 3.30 got release alongside the rest of GNOME. It includes a bunch of new and updated translations, and redacted messages are now hidden.

Riot

Construct

Construct development is still occurring here https://github.com/jevolk/charybdis but we are now significantly closer to pushing the first release to https://github.com/matrix-construct. Also feel free to stop by in #test:zemos.net / #zemos-test:matrix.org as well -- a room hosted by Construct, of course.

tulir has now deployed using the standalone install instructions on a very small LXC VM using ZFS. Unfortunately ZFS does not support O_DIRECT (direct disk IO) which is how Construct achieves maximum performance using concurrent reads. This is not a problem though when using an SSD or for personal deployments. I'll be posting more about how Construct hacked RocksDB to use direct IO, which can get the most out of your hardware with multiple requests in-flight (even with an SSD).

Synapse

Otherwise, Hawkowl has been on a mission to finish the Python 3 port, which is now almost merged.  Testers should probably wait until it fully merges to the develop branch and we'll yell about it then, but impatient adrenaline enthusiasts may want to check out the hawkowl/py3-3 branch (although it may explode in your face, mangle your DB and format your cat, and probably misses lots of recent important PRs like the 0.33.3.1 stuff).  However, i've been running a variant on some servers for the last few days without problems - and it seems (placebo effect notwithstanding) incredibly snappy...

Meanwhile, the Lazy Loaded Member implementation got sped up by 2-3x, which makes /sync roughly 2-3x faster than it would be without Lazy Loading.  This hasn't merged yet, but was the main final blocker behind Lazy Loading going live!

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports bridging to Telegram by installing tulir's mautrix-telegram bridge. This feature is contributed by @izissise.

In addition, Matrix Synapse is now more configurable from the playbook, with support for enabling stats-reporting, event cache size configurability, password peppering.

Matrix Python SDK needs a maintainer

MatrixToyBots!

A new bot appears! Are you a pedantic academic who likes to correct others' misuse of Latin-derived plurals? This task can now be automated for you by means of SingularBot! Also for people who just like to have some fun. Free PongBot and SmileBot included.

kitsune on Hokkaido island

I ended up being on Hokkaido island right when a major earthquake struck it; so no activity on Matrix from me in the nearest couple of days. Also, donations to GlobalGiving for the disaster relief are welcome because people are really struggling here (abusing the communication channel, sorry).

Matrix Live

The Spec

Spec work has completely precluded any other backend dev this week.

Half-Shot, gone but not really gone

Bridges

matrix-appservice-irc 0.11.0

New features & improvements:

• Cache modes internally
• Replace nicks with user pill mentions
• Kick users if we fail to create an IRC client for them on join (aka ILINE kicks)
• SASL support
• Add err_nononreg so we can announce PMs that failed
• Formatting of replies

• Fix invalidchar nick
• Don't answer any msgtypes other than text in an admin room.
• Fix provisoner leaving users on unlink
• Fixed a bug where content of events the bridge hadn't cached were not being used in replies.
• We were calling authedRequest but the request was not mocked out.
• There was a bug involving intents in m-a-b so it was bumped

• Metrics for MatrixHandler - Iline Kicks
• Idle connection metrics
• QueuePool.waitingItems should use it's internal queue size

• Section out tests, linting and coverage into seperate stages for Travis

WhatsApp

now bridges a lot more stuff, such as formatting, media and replies. I'm also almost done with desegregating users so that Matrix users join the same group chat portals rather than everyone having their own portal to the same chat

Zulip chat, bridged by Zulip

IRC Connection Tracker

IRC Connection Tracker is a thing now. It's a project to separate out the IRC connections from the appservice so the two can be run independently, so that restarting the appservice doesn't affect the IRC connections. It's hopefully going to allow bridge stuff to run faster when it's done.

Clients

Nheko 0.5.4

• The settings page now includes the device id & device fingerprint (thanks @valkum )
• The Polish translation has been updated (thanks @m4sk1n )

Fractal

Fractal 3.29.92 got released and we are freezing strings to give GNOME translators a bit of time to complete translations for 3.30 next week. Latest developments include tweaks for the title bar, misc bug fixes, a new presentation for uploaded files (that are not images, those are still displayed inline) with buttons to download or open them. Development builds are now parallel installable for easier testing and CI has been improved.

Seaglass

Seaglass now has some early support for inline images and attachments, and supports Quick Look. Also handles emotes and notices better. It also has version numbers now, various other little fixes and Aaron Raimist has been working on auto-update support.

There's also been some work on supporting dark mode on Mojave (which looks particularly sexy) and even Touch Bar support!

Riot Android v0.8.15

Changes in Riot Android 0.8.15 (2018-08-30)

• Upgrade to version 0.9.9.

• Improve intent to open document (#2544)
• Avoid useless dialog for permission (#2331)
• Improve wording when exporting keys (#2289)

• Upgrade lib libphonenumber from v8.0.1 to 8.9.12
• Upgrade Google firebase libs

• Handle \\/ at the beginning of a message to send a message starting with / (#658)
• Escape nicknames starting with a forward slash / in mentions (#2146)
• Improve management of Push feature
• MatrixError mResourceLimitExceededError is now managed in MxDataHandler (vector-im/riot-android#2547 point 2)

Changes in Riot Android 0.8.14 (2018-08-27)

• Upgrade to version 0.9.8.

• Manage server quota notices (#2440)

• Do not ask permission to write external storage at startup (#2483)
• Update settings icon and transparent logo for notifications and navigation drawer (#2492)
• URL previews are no longer requested from the server when displaying URL previews is disabled (PR #2514)
• Fix some plural and puzzle strings, and remove other unused ones (#2444)
• Manage System Alerts in a dedicated section

• Upgrade olm-sdk.aar from version 2.2.2 to version 2.3.0
• move PieFractionView from the SDK to the client (#2525)

• Fix media sharing (#2530)
• Fix notification sound issue in settings (#2524)
• Disable app icon badge for "listen for event" notification (#2104)

Riot iOS 0.7.3

Changes in 0.7.3 (2018-08-27)

• Upgrade MatrixKit version (v0.8.3).

• Fix input toolbar reset in RoomViewController on MXSession state change (#2006 and #2008).
• Fix user interaction disabled in master view of UISplitViewContoller when selecting a room (#2005).

Changes in 0.7.2 (2018-08-24)

• Upgrade MatrixKit version (v0.8.2).
• Server Quota Notices in Riot (#1937).

• User defaults: the preset application language (if any) is ignored.
• Recents: Avoid to open a room twice (it crashed on room creation on quick HSes).
• Riot-bot: Do not try to create a room with it if the user homeserver is not federated.

Riot Web

SDKs

Ruby Matrix SDK

Matrix Android SDK

Changes to Matrix Android SDK in 0.9.9 (2018-08-30)

• Clear unreachable Url when clearing media cache (vector-im/riot-android#2479)
• "In reply to" is not clickable on Riot Android yet. Make it a plain text (vector-im/riot-android#2469)

• Removing room from 'low priority' or 'favorite' does not work (vector-im/riot-android#2526)
• MatrixError mResourceLimitExceededError is now managed in MxDataHandler (vector-im/riot-android#2547)

• MxSession constructor is now private. Please use MxSession.Builder() to create a MxSession

Changes to Matrix Android SDK in 0.9.8 (2018-08-27)

• Manage server_notices tag and server quota notices (vector-im/riot-android#2440)

• Room aliases including the '@' and '=' characters are now recognized as valid (vector-im/riot-android#2079, vector-im/riot-android#2542)
• Room name and topic can be now set back to empty (vector-im/riot-android#2345)

• Remove PieFractionView class from the Matrix SDK. This class is now in Riot sources (#336)
• MXMediasCache.createTmpMediaFile() methods are renamed to createTmpDecryptedMediaFile()
• MXMediasCache.clearTmpCache() method is renamed to clearTmpDecryptedMediaCache()
• Add MXMediasCache.moveToShareFolder() to move a tmp decrypted file to another folder to prevent deletion during sharing. New API MXMediasCache.clearShareDecryptedMediaCache() can be called when the application is resumed. (vector-im/riot-android#2530)

Matrix iOS SDK

Changes in Matrix iOS SDK in 0.11.3 (2018-08-27)

• MXJSONModel: Manage m.server_notice empty tag sent due to a bug server side (PR #556).

Changes in Matrix iOS SDK in 0.11.2 (2018-08-24)

• MXSession: Add the supportedMatrixVersions method getting versions of the specification supported by the homeserver.
• MXRestClient: Add testUserRegistration to check earlier if a username can be registered.
• MXSession: Add MXSessionStateSyncError state and MXSession.syncError to manage homeserver resource quota on /sync requests (vector-im/riot-ios/issues/1937).
• MXError: Add kMXErrCodeStringResourceLimitExceeded to manage homeserver resource quota (vector-im/riot-ios/issues/1937).
• MXError: Define constant strings for keys and values that can be found in a Matrix JSON dictionary error.
• Tests: MXHTTPClient_Private.h: Add method to set fake delay in HTTP requests.

• People tab is empty in the share extension (vector-im/riot-ios/issues/1988).
• MXError: MXError lost NSError.userInfo information.

Tools

matrix-to-riot

This is a tiny webextension to forward matrix.to links to an open Riot tab.

That's all for now

Synapse 0.33.3

• Add support for the SNI extension to federation TLS connections. Thanks to @vojeroen! (#3439)
• Add /_media/r0/config (#3184)
• speed up /members API and add at and membership params as per MSC1227 (#3568)
• implement summary block in /sync response as per MSC688 (#3574)
• Add lazy-loading support to /messages as per MSC1227 (#3589)
• Add ability to limit number of monthly active users on the server (#3633)
• Support more federation endpoints on workers (#3653)
• Basic support for room versioning (#3654)
• Ability to disable client/server Synapse via conf toggle (#3655)
• Ability to whitelist specific threepids against monthly active user limiting (#3662)
• Add some metrics for the appservice and federation event sending loops (#3664)
• Where server is disabled, block ability for locked out users to read new messages (#3670)
• set admin uri via config, to be used in error messages where the user should contact the administrator (#3687)
• Synapse's presence functionality can now be disabled with the "use_presence" configuration option. (#3694)
• For resource limit blocked users, prevent writing into rooms (#3708)

Spec

• A large chunk of e2e has landed in the spec, largely thanks to Zil0's work. There are still some things left, but the main bits related to sending encrypted messages is in there. Attachments and key sharing are being reviewed today
• TravisR progressed on Push, Application Services, and Client-Server APIs.
• To follow along with progress, the best place to look is the August 2018 r0 tracker.

E2E

ru-matrix.org

Alexey and ma1uta have a new Russian-language community wiki available at https://ru-matrix.org. This:

accumulates Russian translates of Matrix FAQ and manuals, and other info about Matrix in Russian. Also we starts a public Matrix Synapse server for Russian users with free open registration

Russian Matrix users: feel free to add and complement articles in our wiki to make Matrix more friendly for Russian users.

Client News

Seaglass

Seaglass now has support for creating, joining and leaving rooms, and accepting/rejecting room invites, redacting messages, improvements to the room settings pages, timestamps, some visual tweaks, lots of bug fixes, early support for detecting failed message sends, scrolling improvements

Matrique

Typing notification and desktop notification of Matrique are working, plus other improvements

Riot Web

Riot Mobile

• iOS: bug fixes and Lazy Loading in settings
• Android: bug fixes, better management of permission requests at startup

Shared Secret Auth and Matrix Corporal

It allows external systems (which know the shared secret) to easily obtain access tokens for any user hosted on the homeserver. This is incredibly useful for all sorts of automation (no more pre-generated access tokens or plain-text passwords).

Support room for Shared Secret Auth: #matrix-synapse-shared-secret-auth:devture.com

Next, he has released Matrix Corporal, reconciliator and gateway for a managed Matrix server:

It's a way to take control of Matrix (Synapse) in a corporate (or other such) environment.
Based on a configuration policy (generated by an external system, like your intranet), it can auto-create and auto-disable users, keep their profile and authentication details to date, auto-join/leave users to communities and rooms, etc.
It's also meant to sit in front of the Matrix Synapse Client API, inspecting and allowing/denying requests, in accordance with the configuration policy (preventing people from leaving certain rooms/communities, preventing them from messing around with their profile details, etc.)

Note that Slavi also maintains matrix-docker-ansible-deploy, which can deploy these projects along with Synapse itself.

Bots

twimbot

Hashtag bot

Why? Because why not. Source available on github: https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-hashtag-bot

Bridges

matrix-appservice-bridge and matrix-appservice-irc

Just pushed out matrix-appservice-irc 0.11.0-rc3 which contains a lot of nice things. The full changelog is there, hoping to get some of this tested and running on the matrix.org servers soon, but initial testing looks good :)

Released matrix-appservice-bridge 1.6.0 which contains mostly things I was writing for the irc bridge and factored out instead. There's a couple of goodies like automatic caching of profiles/events, and getEvent as a way to fetch events from the homeserver without fiddling with context.

Some Intent operations now cache requests that would otherwise fall through to the homeserver which can be expensive. This is configurable for Intents via the opts.caching.ttl and size options. AgeCounters now allow you to set your own time period buckets. Added a new function Intent.getEvent which will fetch events from the homeserver without any context information, which should be quick.MembershipCache is now exposed to let folks read and write to the cache while also letting the bridge access it.a release: Fix issue where roomState would fail.b release: Fix issue where we were calling this.intent inside intent like fools!c release: Fix issue where some stole js-sdk code was not checked thoroughly.

WhatsApp

It uses the go-whatsapp library to talk with the WhatsApp Web API. Using the web API means that you'll still need WhatsApp on your phone connected to the internet, but it also means you won't get banned for using the bridge.
The bridge is still very alpha, but basic message bridging and some advanced features already work. There's a features & roadmap document about that.

mxtoot

There were two releases last week:

0.4.6 with additional commands (follow, unfollow, mute, unmute, block, unblock users, show followers and followings of the specified user) and a little bugfix.

GSOC is finished!

• Thank you zil0 for all your work on the Matrix Python SDK, E2E and and spec work.
• Thank you APWhiteHat: lots of work on dendrite, including a bunch of stuff on federation, as well as typing notifications!
• and thank you to Cadair for helping to organising it!

The Construct using asynchronous disk IO

the Construct has advanced to fully asynchronous disk IO in a single-threaded environment.
RocksDB is a highly configurable and customizable database with a very large callback surface to support many different environments, which is good to connect it with something like AIO.
Normally RocksDB gets its performance from concurrent standard POSIX system calls (blocking IO) with multiple threads. The callback surface and its internals are not specifically suited for deviating from the pthread model. However I hacked RocksDB and tricked it into believing that my userspace contexts, which mimic the std::thread/pthread interface, are threads.
This is an example of a RocksDB callback to read from a file, it expects this callback to return immediately (i.e as soon as the kernel returns from a blocking read(2).) Except, where I call fs::read() that is actually a stack-suspension which makes a request to linux AIO where the stack resumes after AIO has called back with the data (see: https://github.com/jevolk/charybdis/blob/master/ircd/aio.cc)
No modifications to the internals of RocksDB were necessary. The Construct is being developed here: https://github.com/jevolk/charybdis.

Community Guides Index

• any content in a language other than English
• DevOps, how to use k8s or ansible to install Synapse
• how to use the Application Services API to make a bot

OggCamp 2018

Presentations from Ben and Half-Shot seemed to go down well, we all chatted with Open Source fans and generally flew the flag for Matrix.

New Rooms

• tulir has enough projects that he has created #:maunium.net, for any project of his that doesn't have it's own room
• Support room for Shared Secret Auth: #matrix-synapse-shared-secret-auth:devture.com
• Support room for Matrix Corporal: #matrix-corporal:devture.com
• If you prefer the cold output of a machine, #twim_updates:cadair.com shows you the updates as they're posted in #twim:matrix.org.
• WhatsApp bridge: #whatsapp:maunium.net

So long…

This feels like a bumper (extra big) post, so let's get straight into it!

Spec

Clients

Riot web

Bruno has merged his work on lazy loading room members lists, which should mean we see some big performance improvements, especially in larger rooms. You can expect to see that released on /develop soon.

He has also just started to work on the riot redesign, and has begun on some of the more visible changes like resizeable panels:

More news on the redesign to come soon!

nheko 0.5.3 released

Features

• Add option to disable desktop notifications
• Allow user to configure join rules for a room
• Add tab-completion for usernames

• Remove the space gap taken by the typing notifications
• Remove hover event from emoji picker
• Add tooltips for the message indicators
• Fix compilation on FreeBSD
• Update Polish translation
• Small modal improvements

Seaglass builds being generated

Seaglass is now a very usable and stable client on macOS. neilalexander has been very active this week:

Seaglass has had various updates, including the groundwork for joining and leaving channels, LOADS of crashes fixed, some more work done on avatars and E2E encryption has been fairly well road-tested now Still need to complete UI for device verification and setting E2E but it works fine in existing channels

Quaternion

Quaternion has gained a new way to highlight mentions - with tinted background instead of colored text. Also, the majority of work on rooms grouping is done, and the current master branch features the roomlist grouped by tag (but rooms under each tag are pretty much out of order so it's not really ready for daily use yet).

Palaver

A few days back Palaver has been moved to Gitlab. And I have since released v0.2.0 and v0.2.1. A runnable jar-file of the latest release can be downloaded at https://gitlab.com/MrCustomizer/palaver/tags/v0.2.1. The biggest changes in v0.2.x are the replacement of all the web views with native JavaFX components (as I don't feel comfortable embedding a whole browser stack in a desktop application) and support for read markers. There is a short YouTube video demonstrating the read marker implementation:

Riot mobile

neo client

Matrique

Matrique now has a (basic) room management panel, a working emoji picker, an unread marker and supports playing "m.audio". It should be available at Flathub any time.

SDKs and such

Jeon, Jmsdk, Gene, Matrix-Jabber-Bridge: ma1uta-world

Jeon (https://github.com/ma1uta/jeon) (client2server and application api) has released on the Maven Central Repository with version 0.4.1. The next goal: the stable release of all apis 1.0.0 after the Matrix spec will be released (I hope it will be soon :)) Jmsdk (https://github.com/ma1uta/jmsdk) the client and bot SDK have released on the Maven Central Repository. Gene (https://github.com/ma1uta/gene) the lightweight api for android has released on Maven Central Repository with 0.2.1 version. So, everyone can use this libraries without additional settings and additional repositories. Matrix-Jabber-Bridge (https://github.com/ma1uta/matrix-jabber-java-bridge) the double-pupped bridge between the Matrix and Jabber. I am still working on it and I think it will be released in a few weeks.

Ruby SDK v0.0.3

mautrix-appservice-go

mautrix-appservice-go is a bit more active again: it now has an initial intent API similar to the one in mautrix-appservice-python (which in turn is based on the intent API from matrix-appservice-bridge).

Synapse

• Python 3 port continues at pace, we expect to have a beta to test in monolith mode rsn (Hawkowl leads this)
• Erik has been working on some federation API refactoring to make matrix.org snappier and hopes to have the new state resolution algo ready to go if not deployed late next week
• Richvdh has been looking at performance, as well as spec PRs/ Next week will be r0 work

Matrix support now in ntfy

A utility for sending notifications, on demand and when commands finish

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy got a lot of improvements lately:

• email-sending support, so that Matrix Synapse can send email notifications (enabled by default)
• mxisd Identity Server support (enabled by default)
• more detailed docs split into various sections (used to be a single README, but with more and more features it was turning into a wall of text)
• started keeping a changelog, especially for backward-incompatible things

the playbook can now also set up and configure Maximus's matrix-synapse-rest-auth

Riot Translations

Giveth

For some more context:

Giveth is re-engineering charitable giving, by creating an entirely free, open-source platform, built on the Ethereum Blockchain.

handles welcoming people, can answer questions and handle our crazy points dishing system to reward contributors!

mautrix-telegram

No major changes since the release candidates last week, except a Telethon update that might have fixed history backfill.

"The End of GSOC"

OggCamp

We'll meet again…

Community Guides Index

Clients

Seaglass

Seaglass has had many updates, including:

• message coalescing
• room settings (history/join rules and changing aliases/addresses)
• loading member list in rooms
• some starting work on loading avatars
• various UI and stability tweaks!

Quaternion: new redacted message handling options

In response to the recent spam deluge from Freenode Quaternion has got an option to tidy up your timeline after all the spam-cleaning: you can hide all redacted messages or just those that came from recently joined users (along with the join message). So as long as the spammer gets moderated, it can become inexistent for you. The experimental code doing that will eventually be moved to libQMatrixClient for the benefit of Matrique, uMatriks and other clients based on the library.

Fractal GSOC write-ups

Riot

Meanwhile on Riot/Web, Lazy Loading members is pretty much complete - just writing end-to-end tests to ensure that encryption still works well when lazy loading is enabled.  Next up is actually progressing the redesign at last!

Spec status

• MSC1425/MSC1501 richvdh has been thinking about Room Versioning
  • A summary in his words: "room upgrades are implemented by creating a new room, shutting down the old one, and linking between the two"
• MSC1497 thorough discussion happening against Matthew's proposal for Capabilities support in the CS API
• MSC1442 though you may have seen it previously, I recommend anyone who is able to take a look at Erik's "State Resolution: Reloaded" proposal. This documents his "thoughts on the next iteration of the state resolution algorithm that aims to mitigate currently known attacks". It very clearly explains the current problem, and the proposed solution. While heavy, I found it really useful for helping to understand State Res and everything it affects.
• MSC1485 tulir proposes "Hint buttons in messages", which effectively provide pre-defined responses for users. This is especially valuable for Bots which can only accept a certain range of replies. I'd love to see this implemented, having long ago built a "choose your own adventure" engine using similar features from another messaging platform.

APIs and SDKs

Gene, minimalistic client-server api for Matrix

Ruby Matrix SDK

Telegram Puppeting on t2bot.io with mautrix-telegram

This is a public trial to see how the bridge copes with multiple people puppeting their accounts. Of course, you don't need to puppet your account unless you want to. For more information on how to set this up, please visit https://t2bot.io/telegram

Informo project releases SaltStack states

They introduce the Informo project:

Informo's a project (still a work in progress, currently) that aims at bypassing censorship of information on the Internet, by basically having news items go through a decentralised and federated network made of Matrix homeservers. Since we need to host nodes to this network (at least for testing purposes), we've worked on a working and automated infrastructure using SaltStack, which involved hand-writing a few SaltStack states, including states handling the installation and configuration of working Synapse homeservers. In the spirit of giving back to the community, we're publishing all of those hand-written states (available at the GH link above) under the GPLv3 license. If you want to discuss with us about what we're doing, or this topic specifically, please join us in #discuss:weu.informo.network ? The project is still pretty much a WIP and the technical specifics (even the ones we already implemented in our projects) are still under discussion and subject to changes (as mentioned in the GH repo's readme). All I can add for sure to what we already say is that we'll be working in partnership with NGOs to promote the project in countries where the press is heavily censored, and we're planning on implementing a cryptographic verification chain of some sort to reduce the risk of intentional disinformation.

Synapse 0.33.2

The release focuses on performance, notable highlights include reducing CPU consumption through speeding up state delta calculations and reducing I/O through lazily loading state on the master process Separately work continues on our python 3 port and we hope to have something concrete to trial very soon – we're really excited about this and expect step change improvements in CPU and memory use.

Room Tagging

FIN

No Matrix Live this week due to vacation and general scheduling fun; sorry!

If you have documentation or articles related to matrix, let me know!

We'll meet again!

mautrix-telegram now supports double puppeting

It means you can log in to the bridge with your Matrix account to make messages you send from other Telegram clients appear from your Matrix account.

It can also be used to enable bridging of ephemeral events, which synapse doesn't send to appservices (read receipts, typing notifications, presence).

Also, the bridge has a new HTML parser which should be much better than the old one. It might have caused some new bugs though (like m.emote bridging breaking)

Coffee and the FAQBot

The final puzzle piece needed for FAQBot has been put into place: https://gitlab.com/Matrixcoffee/extract-web-to-org
This is the bit that grabs "Try Matrix Now!" and turns it into questions that FAQBot can use.
While I was working on that bit of code anyway, I also added support for the new 'home', 'repo', 'room' and 'language' fields. FAQBot will now give more and better information accordingly. For example, it is now possible to ask, "where is the Riot Android source code?" although it is generally better to just ask "where can I find Riot Android?" which combines several fields into a single answer.
4 of 7 items are now completed: https://gitlab.com/Matrixcoffee/FAQBot/issues/2
and the remaining 3 items before FAQBot's release are just the final review and integration tests.

New Discord Bridge Maintainer

We've got a new member of the maintainer crew in discord bridge land (bringing the total count to 2.) I'd like to welcome Sorunome :). They are going to be helping review the influx of PRs, chew some issues and be a point of contact in the community. They've already filled my PR queue up and it's going to help us move even faster!

Bruno unit tests

Fractal 3.29.5

Fractal got a big new release 3.29.5, which includes Eisha's multi-line input (with markdown syntax highlighting) and Julian's room details redesign, as well as his refactor on avatar code which leads to a perf boost.

Ananace: Grafana webhook for Matrix notifications

Quaternion / libQMatrixClient support local echo

/me accidentally found a year-old feature branch in his Git and thought of rebasing it in order to eventually continue working on it. As a result, libQMatrixClient and Quaternion master branches support local echo from today. Too bad the same trick doesn't work for E2EE.

Riot/Web

• Cut the release candidate for 0.16-RC1
• Lots of final polishing on Jitsi; all bugs fixed now
• Likewise all Slate bugs fixed - many thanks to t3chguy for finishing them off
• Lazy Loading Members implementation progressing well
• Release due on Monday
• On crypto: uhoreg has also been progressing on hooking up incremental key backup

Riot/Mobile

• Room version upgrade support!
• Replies UI implemented on iOS and working well
• Lazy Loading Members is done and working on iOS - speeds up launch by a minimum of 3x

Synapse

• Hawkowl is running the first ever Python 3.6 synapse! RAM usage looks to be 2-3x less than on Python 2.7. Still work to be done to merge all the PRs though.
• Landing all the Lazy Loading patches; 3 down, 3 to go
• Gathering feedback on the state res prop - thanks to uhoreg for wading through it!
• Catching up Lots and lots of PRs
• Implementing room versioning and gathering feedback on the MSC
• Perf fixes - optimising current state res a bit & fixing sync performance
• => End-to-end message latency on matrix.org has been improved by 3-5x over the last few days(!!!)

Dendrite

• Super-exciting to see E2E working thanks to fadeAce's PR: https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1022887733931520001

Super-exciting to see end-to-end encryption working with Dendrite thanks to a massive PR from first-time contributor fadeAce!! https://t.co/SLIPvgYGAm pic.twitter.com/s47SWjY46o

— Matrix (@matrixdotorg) July 27, 2018

• OpenTracing support has been dusted off and is working again cross-service
• See the community update for much more!

Spec

• Travis continues to blitz through the S2S spec, PRs are flying around everywhere (and even landing!)
• Uhoreg continues to work on the E2E spec merges with Zil0

We'll meet again…

Spec Updates!

The next step on State Resolution: Reloaded (once approved) is to be able to actually roll it out - and to this end, richvdh has proposed MSC1425 (Room Versioning proposal). This was published at the beginning of the week but we haven't had any feedback yet - again, please read & give feedback as the intention is to start working on this as soon as possible!  Matthew's also been updating the Lazy Loading proposal (MSC1227).

Meanwhile, the Matrix Spec is now awash with activity, lots of work from TravisR, Cadair and others to accelerate progress. Take a look at the proposals list to stay up to date, or straight to the matrix-doc repo and #matrix-spec:matrix.org room to get the raw activity.

Finally, discussions relating to the spec proposal process itself have attracted attention: MSC1426 and MSC1421, and we're already trialling the new process (using Github PRs rather than Google Docs) in MSC1442 (State Resolution: Reloaded) already.

nheko 0.5.x

Plasma

I've updated the CI test server with the latest snapshot version of plasma. createRoom and invite C2S endpoints are fully implemented and should work as expected.

kitsune, live on stage

GTAD pulls in description and summary fields from the API

GTAD is now aware of description and summary fields in API descriptions so you can use them with Javadoc/Doxygen. As a result, libQMatrixClient master branch now enjoys doc-comments throughout its CS API layer - the rest of the library builds in envy.

mautrix-telegram

mautrix-telegram now has a provisioning API, meaning integration managers like Dimension can make an auth/portal management interface for the bridge

Soon in matrix: Dimension will have support for that provisioning API

SimpleMatrix

SimpleMatrix is my approach on making an Android App that is more easy to use than the official one in Terms of UX and UI. Planned is also a Android Wear App within this App for mostly Notifications.

Room: #SimpleMatrix:matrix.ffslfl.net Git: https://git.nordgedanken.de/Nordgedanken/SimpleMatrix

Tales of Half-Shot and his many Bridges

Arrival of the Discord DMs

After lots of begging, frustration and eventually an offer of a free lunch (thanks Anoa): I give you Discord DMs.
This first cut bridges over existing regular and group DMs to Matrix. In the future we will also allow you to create DMs from Matrix so that you can contact users without even logging into Discord. With thanks to the #discord:half-shot.uk community for helping shape this feature!

Currently this is in PR form but is very likely to make it into the 0.3 release of matrix-appservice-discord.

Half-Shot fixes the Foonetic IRC bridge

Synapse

Riot

Meanwhile, lots of work on Lazy Loading members on Riot/Web and Riot/iOS, and lots of stability perf work in general across mobile.

State Resolution Special... Matrix Live!

Welcome to TWIM for Friday the 13th! Nothing too scary, but lots of client updates and news.

Quaternion

Quaternion has gained a new /html command that allows one to send raw HTML. Note that an actually displayed HTML subset entirely depends on the receiving client; no HTML validation or sanitation is done; a plaintext version is automatically created by stripping all the HTML tags.

neo

added emotes, working localecho and /rainbow

rainbows :D

matrix-logger

I wrote a small matrix "client" for logging messages in joined rooms, and store them in a format very similar to Weechat logs.Source code (Rust) Binary release (x86_64 windows & linux)Please open issues if encounter any bug or need specific features.\\nAlso I'm new to rust, so any review / advices would be appreciated :)

Matrique client progress

Matrique now has support for sending/receiving messages (plaintext, markdown, HTML, rainbow), emotes and notices. It also supports receiving images, videos, files and states. I am still working on file receiving functions.

I love that all clients include rainbow messages.

fluffychat for Ubuntu Touch

Why are you not just contributing to uMatriks? uMatriks is great and it's superb, that someone has created a Matrix Client for Ubuntu Touch. But sometimes you have a so detailed vision of a user interface, which you want to implement, that you can not just contribute to an existing project. However, I would like to work with the uMatriks developers together. We could use the same push gateway for example.

Riot/Web

• Welcomed Bruno onto the Riot/Web team! (and said farewell to Luke)
• Lots of bug blitzing
• Riot 0.16 due next week, with Jitsi-everywhere (at last) and Slate for composer.
• We now have an end-to-end test harness (via puppeteer!) at last - being applied at first to fix onboarding bugs.
• Lazy loading members in progress

Riot/Mobile

• Major perf work ongoing
• Decoupling members from state…
• …and then lazyloading members.

Synapse 0.32.2 available

• If you're not running 0.32, please upgrade!!
• Python 3 progresses!
• Quite a lot of ops work to keep matrix.org alive. Status page coming soon! (We promise!!)
• Looking at metrics and quotas for better experiences on limited-resource homeservers.

Spec

• State res fix
• Version bump
• Lots of omission PRs landing
• TravisR S2S work
• Work on both IS & AS API too
• Uhoreg work - .well-known, and 3pid logins
• Some internal discussions about improving the proposal process; particularly having a 5 day 'final comment period' similar to Rust's. Once we've got alignment within the core spec team we'll MSC it.

Dendrite

• Anoa & APwhitehat continue to blitz onwards on AS and federation
• thirdparty protocol support for application services in the works.
• continued progress on getting the AS query APIs supported. PR for /alias still being reviewed, PR for /users happened this week and now being reviewed
• Timestamp massaging for application services ready and in review
• APWhiteHat did a good chunk on federation, now migrating to supporting the various EDUs, starting with m.typing events.
• …running out of low hanging fruit…

AS

• matrix-appservice-irc 0.9.1 is here with perf improvements!
• Lots of work on trying to make it start up sooner

E2E

• UISI stats
• Device list syncing
• Encrypted backup

Debian Packages

uhoreg has packaged quaternion 0.0.9.2 for Debian

That's all folks

matrix-synapse for Docker and k8s

So now the K8s stuff has configuration examples for Synapse + Riot + mxisd + coturn, all runnable on your very own Kubernetes cluster - though with some manual tinkering required at the moment.
I've updated the Kubernetes configuration examples to include everything you need for a full Matrix stack; Synapse + Riot + mxisd - using the built-in K8s ingress
And + coturn of course, not to forget

mautrix-telegram is now the primary Telegram bridge on t2bot.io

t2bot.io is now running mautrix-telegram as the primary Telegram bridge. Feel free to join the other 10k users on the bridge and bridge your own Telegram group to your room: https://t2bot.io/telegram/.

Docker images for the matrix spec

For Docker fans: I've created a couple of Docker images (https://hub.docker.com/r/uhoreg/matrix-doc-build/ and https://hub.docker.com/r/uhoreg/matrix-doc-watch/ ) for building the Matrix spec HTML.

Debian packaging

I'm packaging Circle IRC/Matrix client for Debian and backporting synapse to stable.

Google Summer of Code

apwhitehat is working on Dendrite

Dendrite updates for TWIM (before GSoC 2nd eval): This month we've got most of the federation APIs working on Dendrite. These are:

• State APIs #486
• Get missing events API #516
• Query user devices #498

We still need to figure out pagination for backfill API.

On applications services, we've got a lot of APIs working, thanks to anoa. Authentication now acknowledges App services, though lot of other stuff is under review. I am eagerly waiting for it to land.

We've had a PR from fadeAce/dirichlet_zby for the server-side implementation of end-to-end encryption support in Dendrite. Will be looking forward to seeing that land as well.

Zil0 is working on E2E in the Python SDK

Encryption in matrix-python-sdk should now work fairly well.
The biggest parts to write were device tracking and key persistence. All the PRs are now opened, and the code is fully tested and documented.
It is possible to try out the implementation before it lands by refering to instructions written here.
Also a special thanks to poljar for some great work on new Olm bindings, which allowed the project not to get stuck with packaging issues.
Further work include encrypted attachments, device verification and key sharing.

koma, kotlin client

sideboat:

This week in koma, we are improving the room info window used for viewing and editing the name, icon, and aliases of a room. In the upcoming release, user power levels will be taken into account, so that editing options will only be shown when the user has enough power.

Synapse

We've just cut the next release candidate for Synapse: 0.32.0rc1.
The upcoming release focuses almost entirely on security; fixing federation bugs and adding new features for countering abuse.

Riot

Otherwise:

• More work on the Jitsi integration
• More work troubleshooting E2E failures
• v0.15.6 and v0.15.7-rc.1 now available

Self-reference

Welcome

koma

There have been quite some changes since updates of the project were last posted, but the major ones are:

• Upgrade to JavaFx 9
• Experimental support for infinite scroll on message list
• Rewrite ListView to improve performance and reduce jar file size

dialogflow connector

I've written a little bot for connecting a DialogFlow agent to Matrix as a chatbot. I did this for my own personal purposes but I know someone else might find this handy as well.

mautrix-telegram

New stuff in mautrix-telegram:

• A basic telematrix database import script
• Improved config for relaybot message formatting, including the option to use Matrix displaynames (instead of just mxid localparts) I've also been planning an improved Matrix->Telegram formatting converter and a provisioning API for integration managers like Dimension.

jmsdk

Currently implemented the matrix client on the java with full support of the C2S API. It still under development and contains bugs.

matrix-appservice-voip

We have successfull VoIP bridging between Matrix and regular phones using Freeswitch, for 1:1, both directions! a v0.1 is scheduled in a few days once configuration is possible and a getting started doc is written.

Next steps:

• more voice backends (think Jitsi, etc.)
• SMS support with Twilio and/or OVH initially
• mxisd integration to automatically invite bridge users if needed and suggest bridge users
• mxgwd integration to auto-join HS regular users if a VoIP bridge user invites them, so > calls are directly seen
• And much more in later releases

Join #matrix-appservice-voip:kamax.io for more info, or visit the Github repo

transform

I have been working on a homeserver implementation over at https://github.com/bettiah/transform . It is fairly basic at the moment, but the development experience is straight-forward and even fun.

Transform is a matrix homeserver built using Typescript and Redis. It is not fully functional yet.Status: Register, Login, CreateRoom, Invite & Join seem to be functional with riot web client. But quite a lot of functionality is missing and the software is definitely not ready for deployment in a public facing role.Design: A lot of the code is auto-generated from the excellent swagger specs for the client-server api.Contributing: It is early days yet. However, Typescript has enabled safe & rapid progress. Redis streams too seem to have a very well thought out api and the whole thing has been a fun experience so far. Contributions are very welcome.

dsn-traveller source code released!

From Florian:

I received permission to publish the source code of the DSN Traveller bot (https://dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu/) prior to handing in my thesis: You can find it at https://github.com/florianjacob/dsn-traveller, it's written with ruma-client and Rust async/await.

E2E for Python SDK

first olm-centered E2E PR for the python sdk merged to master (finally). Lots of great work from Zil0 still to be merged waiting on PR review. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-python-sdk/pull/224

Fractal

From Tobias:

No new Fractal release this week. Development was quite active nevertheless, with Jordan's new inline audio player landing in master, Julian getting close to landing the first part of the new room settings, and Eisha working on improving the image viewer.

Riot

• New Release! v15.6 - https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/releases/tag/v0.15.6
• Jitsi by default for Video calls
• Replies to messages
• New room sharing feature

New Rooms

• #matrix.fi:matrix.org - a room for Finnish speakers

And so…

libQMatrixClient 0.3.0.2 and Quaternion 0.0.9.2

libQMatrixClient 0.3.0.2 has been released - no new features, just small fixes including one for an unlucky typo preventing 0.3.0.1 from generating .cpp files with GTAD.

Quaternion 0.0.9.2 is out, another step towards 0.1. Aside from bugfixes and using the latest libQMatrixClient, it features an entirely new timeline layout similar to that of Riot (the old one is still around too). Also, you can now change some settings through the menu rather than by editing a configuration file or registry - including switching timeline layouts on the fly!

Loading Artist sticker packs!

The Official Loading Artist sticker pack got added to Dimension ?

It also got added to Modular (aka Scalar), the default integration manager for Riot :)

releasetracker

Decided to actually start pushing code I've been slowly prodding at for the last while, ever since starting the Ruby Matrix SDK in fact. Working on a Sibbell like system that tracks new releases on GitHub projects, posting them into a specified Matrix room.

The release tracker now tracks both full releases and just regular tags, though only one or the other at the moment.

Spun up a proper room for the release tracker, in case people want to help development / feel like using hosted alpha-level software more than running it themselves. #releasetracker:kittenface.studio

jeon and jmsdk updates

I reorganized my projects and extracted the sdk from the api. So, today I have one project for the api (https://github.com/ma1uta/jeon), another for the sdk (https://github.com/ma1uta/jmsdk) but last is very early and non-usable.
Also I covered the code with the swagger-annotation and now I can generate the swagger schema from the code. There is an example: https://github.com/ma1uta/jeon/blob/master/client-api/generated/swagger-ui/swagger.json
And there is an example of the spec was generated from swagger: https://ma1uta.github.io/matrix-api.html (plain and without sorting or grouping, I'll maybe fix it).
Everyone can ask me in the #jeon:matrix.org (matrix api) or #mxtoot:matrix.org (matrix-mastodon bridge).
Then I want to cover the remaining api (appservice, push, identity but not federation because it isn't completed yet), write sdk (client, bot). And publish api and sdk on the maven central repository.

CI/CD for Plasma!

I've setup CI/CD for plasma HS. Now every time a push occur on the repo, the pipeline builds and deploys a plasma HS instance on a test server.
This test instance is reachable at http://matrix.beerfactory.org:9000. For now it is very modest and can only reply to a few C2S endpoints like GET /_matrix/client/versions. POST /_matrix/client/r0/login and POST /_matrix/client/r0/register are also available for testing registration and login flow. POST /_matrix/client/r0/createRoom is also available with the TEST_TOKEN auth token value, but it's only a mock.
I'm now working on implementing the concept of room servers: each room will be managed by a dedicated room server (an actor), so they get fault tolerance and scalability by default (through akka clustering).
There's also a dedicated room for this project : #plasma:beerfactory.org

matrix-python-sdk 0.3.2

v0.3.2 of matrix-python-sdk released. See the github release for list of changes. (v0.3.0 and v0.3.1 are substantially the same with small formatting errors). There are a lot of hugely annoying bugs fixed in this one, so upgrading soon is recommended.

gomatrixclient

I am currently writing a high-level API on top of gomatrix. As gomatrix is suitable for bots but not for clients, I decided to write a layer above it. (The motivation is to provide a backend for Matrique) It will have similar API as libqmatrixclient, but in Golang. It is currently under heavy development, and API breaking changes are frequent. Sources are available in Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/b0/gomatrixclientP.s. It is a library for writing clients in Golang. But it also provides useful APIs for basic functions, e.g. getting avatars.

Fractal 3.29.1

It looks like this (screenshot being a screenshot of, uh, last week's screenshot, for maximum fractalception...)

Terraform Provider

I've been working on a Terraform provider for matrix. It is still a work in progress, however I plan to have the basics completed in the coming days. The provider gives you the opportunity to create users, rooms, and other objects on your homeserver, making your homeserver part of your infrastructure. This could be useful for people who want to set up a monitoring room, or for setting up default rooms on a homeserver instance. In particular, this provider will be used by the monitor bot (see last week's post) to set up the test homeservers for seeing how the bot scales with increased server counts. Source and information available on Github: https://github.com/turt2live/terraform-provider-matrix

mxtoot 0.4.3

ma1uta says:I've fixed a few bugs and added some new commands (show status by id and show n-last statuses), and now mxtoot 0.4.3 (Matrix-Mastodon bridge) can send public, private, unlisted and direct messages. There are 4 features left to go:

• show, add and remove follows;
• show threads;
• show notification, public and federated lines (and optionally merge them with the home timeline);
• show account info by id.

Also I think to implement a bridge Matrix-ActivityPub as S2S. For example, a room - is a ActivityPub's actor. Room participants is a bot corresponds to actors you follow to. Room timeline is a Inbox+Outbox. Reactions is a likes/favorites. Pinning message is a boost. Replies will be very useful.

mautrix-telegram now puppets via user-specific relay bots!

mautrix-telegram now supports logging in with your own bot. It means that you can look almost like a real user and even use direct messages without logging in with your real Telegram account!

And finally...

We also announced the Open Governance work which we've been doing in order to extend control of the Matrix spec to properly include the wider Matrix community - the plan is to get the Matrix.org Foundation legal entity set up roughly around the same time as the r0 release of the spec in August, and formally decouple control of the Matrix spec from New Vector (the company we set up last year to hire the core team).

We'd also like to welcome mujx (developer of nheko) and kitsune (developer of Quaternion and libQMatrixClient) to the new core team as we start trialling the new governance structure (which mainly amounts at this point to getting review approvals on spec proposals and changes from the relevant domain experts on the new team).  This brings us to a full complement for the team: Erik (servers), richvdh (servers, crypto & clients), Dave (clients & push/identity) and uhoreg (crypto, general) from the current core team; and Anoa (servers, AS API), TravisR (integrations, AS API; acting with Dimension hat on), mujx & kitsune from the community.

Otherwise, spec work has taken priority over writing software, with the exception of: APwhitehat doing as much federation work in Dendrite as part of GSoC as the current unstable state of the API allows; Michael (t3chguy) has been blitzing through P1 Riot/Web issues.  Next week should be back on the normal (if not better!) trajectory however.  No Matrix Live this week however, as we're all exhausted.

GSOC Updates

Zil0 on the matrix-python-sdk

I am working on implementing end-to-end encryption in the Python SDK. As of now, I have done a good part of the encryption and decryption work with Olm and Megolm, enough to allow communicating with Riot in an encrypted room. My next goals include device list tracking and key persistence, which are the main steps left before the implementation starts being usable in a real environment.

apwhitehat on Dendrite

My aim is to achieve feature completion on Dendrite. Have got lots of help from anoa, for which I'm very grateful.

• we made a transactions cache/table for idempotency. So now dendrite will not reprocess events as far as client-server api is concerned.
• added request authentication function which recognises an application service user (partially landed.)
• username auto generation, which let's you register without username (will be used for guest access later.)
• We also added a tokens library based on macaroons, however we might not be using it anytime soon. Since it's been known to be very problematic (on synapse).
• Other small bug fixes not big enough to mention.

Clients

palaver

More news from the JVM-world: I've just released the first Alpha version (v0.1.0) of Palaver, a Desktop client written in Kotlin: https://github.com/MrCustomizer/palaver/releases/tag/v0.1.0. As backend it uses the matrix-java-sdk, the GUI is written in TornadoFX, a Kotlin-Wrapper for JavaFX. The room for this client is #palaver:matrix.localtoast.de. The current features are listed in the changelog: https://github.com/MrCustomizer/palaver/blob/v0.1.0/CHANGELOG.md. And there is a little demo video on youtube, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuGuxAPuRIM.

matrique returns

a matrix client using golang and QtQuick controls 2. It is not ready...Yet. PRs and issues are welcomed!

neilalexander has a new macOS Client: seaglass

kitsune: GTAD and libQMatrixClient

GTAD (Generate Things from an API Description) is a generator of code from a Swagger/OpenAPI specification. Initially made to generate marshalling/unmarshalling C++ code for Matrix CS API, it can be extended to support other API descriptions and other programming languages with static type checking.

A new version of API code generator, GTAD, 0.6, has been released today, adding support of variant types, proper dealing with definitions referencing other files ($ref) and more options to override schema names - even defined inline. Most importantly, GTAD has got extensive README.md that describes (most of) the things needed to start writing your own templates! As usual, kitsune will be happy to help those who would like to try it (both with C/C++ projects and other languages).

libQMatrixClient has been benefiting from GTAD over the last 4 months or so - but this is the first release where GTAD is stable and feature-complete enough to be shared with other projects.

and libQMatrixClient 0.3:

A new version of libQMatrixClient, 0.3, comes out this weekend. This is the first libQMatrixClient release to include (almost) all CS API requests and supplementary (non-event) definitions, thanks to GTAD 0.6. Notably, it now includes jobs to register users, manage devices and keys on the server (no local key management yet - E2E work has just begun). This version also gains centralised request error handling so that clients could deal with problems in a unified way, and support "Consent not given" errors of GDPR fame, so that client authors could automatically open consent pages. You can also trigger logging out of all devices through libQMatrixClient thanks to a very recent addition to CS API spec from TravisR.

Fractal

nheko

• Overdue fixes for some regressions with regard to widget height introduced in the previous two releases
• The matrix id will be shown on hover on the display name.

riot-web

riot-android

We have been working on Riot stability: fixing crashes and adding more tools to control code quality The community on android adds a more readable display of keys and a floating actions menu is coming.

riot-ios

Working on perf. On stability too (like killing build warnigs). Users can now re-request keys when they have UTCs.

Other projects

anoa on dendrite

We've got a shiny new application service component which runs as a separate process (if you're doing multiprocess dendrite) that handles all outbound communication to application services. Last week I got event sending working. This week I'm hooking up an internal API for other components (roomserver, c-s api) to talk to the app service component, as we occasionally need to ping AS's to ask about existence of rooms or users. Getting those two endpoints covered is the goal of this week.

ma1uta Full Spec Implementation in Java

I want to create a full spec's implementation on java (all 5 specification). After that I want try to write a homeserver (2 variants: distributed on java+kafka and simple which can run on a ligth vps). But it's a long-term goal.

https://gitlab.com/ma1uta/jeon - another java implementation of the matrix api (client-server, server-server, application server, push server, identity server) using jax-ws. It corresponds the specification on https://matrix.org/docs/spec. On the next step I want dive deep into synapse to parse it's api and fill the gaps of the spec with sending pull request. May be I will write something like a TCK (test compability kit).

Also this project has a very early sdk (client, bot). I will fix it after finishing works with the spec.https://gitlab.com/ma1uta/mxtoot - matrix-mastodon bridge. With this bridge you can invite a bot and read your home mastodon's timeline, post messages, reply and boost messages.

• #mxtoot:matrix.org for Matrix-Mastodon bridge.
• #jeon:matrix.org for Matrix implementation on java.

The Continuing Adventures of Half-Shot and the Discord Bridge

• Support Node v10
• Option to disable @here and @everyone on the bridge - Permission based mentions coming soon.
• Sending large files over the Discord limit now sends them as URLs
• Added support for external and animated emoji - Thanks @Sorunome!
• Initial support for m.sticker
• Sender avatars are now thumbnailed - Thanks @turt2live
• Support for message edits. Thanks @anoadragon453
• Support for custom and animated discord emoji parsing M->D. Thanks @anoadragon453
• Throw discord.js logs into our logging to help debug connection issues
• Warn when turning on encryption that the bridge will no longer work.
• Clarify where to specify protocols in the registration config. Thanks @anoadragon453
• Add attachments into the event store and fix up some of our Inserts. Thanks @eeeeeta
• Fail if the event.content.url is not present.

t3chguy matrix-search including e2e

a local Full Text Search engine for Matrix, which will index the events locally and then provide a search api interface for matrix clients to query it matrix-search mimics the standard /search API

Ananace on Kubernetes

Switched the Kubernetes-oriented Synapse image over to running on the official one as a base, seems to still work quite well. Even if there were some issues at first due to Alpine and busybox.

I've been building slightly specialized Synapse docker images since 0.25.1 - and running them on my Kubernetes cluster at home. Moved them to being based on the official images now instead of building them on CentOS as I used to.

Synapse 0.31.0 and 0.31.1 released

• Most notable change from v0.30.0 is to switch to python prometheus library to improve system stats reporting. WARNING this changes a number of prometheus metrics in a backwards-incompatible manner.
• There are still many changes being made relating to the Python 3 migration.

v0.31.1 fixes a security bug in the “get_missing_events“ federation API where event visibility rules were not applied correctly.

Guides index

New rooms

• mentioned above, from ma1uta:
  • #mxtoot:matrix.org for Matrix-Mastodon bridge.
  • #jeon:matrix.org for Matrix implementation on java.
• #gtad:matrix.org is kitsune's room for gtad.
• #palaver:matrix.localtoast.de for Palaver discussion

other points of interest

• things are happening with doorman but I have not checked in for some time
• tulir mentioned that https://github.com/Dhole is working on a matrix Go client and an e2e lib
• Coffee migrated to Gitlab, including: https://gitlab.com/Matrixcoffee/matrix-client-core
• Naming things is hard. neilalexander's previously nameless client and Matrique both came under discussion for naming issues.
• benpa just discovered VS Code markdown preview and can't believe the time he wasted before

The end is nigh...

Check out Matrix Live:

GDPR

Projects

Synapse

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy can now set up your homeserver using the official Matrix Synapse Docker image

Using this Ansible playbook is probably the easiest way to set up a fully-functioning Matrix homeserver on your own machine. The setup includes Matrix Synapse and some related services required to actually make it useful (automatically-managed HTTPS; STUN/TURN server for audio/video calls; Postgres database for Synapse; optionally riot-web; optionally Amazon S3 storage support)

matrix-registration

Says Zeratax:

my personal problem was: i didn't want to open up registration for everyone i didn't want to register every account manually and have to worry about seeing passwords etc now i can just share a link, e.g: https://zeratax.github.io/matrix-registration/demo.html?token=JargonGingerYankee

and my friends can register.

these token can be restricted as one time usable only or by an expiration date.

dendrite activity!

Last week dendrite was filtering events from user's into seperate queues for each application service to eventually be given. Sending these events requires batching them up into transactions and then sending them to an HTTP endpoint on the application service. I'm happy to report that from today, that functionality is now implemented, along with graceful handling of both server and application service downtime.

Fractal

Fractal got the beginning of a revamped directory (from one of our GSoC interns), as well as misc bugfixes and performance improvements. It has also been added to Damned lies, the GNOME platform for translations.

neo 0.06

Beautiful new file upload dialog, with previews, captions and the option to cancel. Making 1on1 chat look a bit nicer.

added: file upload dialog room canonical alias fallback for name 1on1 room now shows avatar+name of partner

changed: getting room name/image in initialSync instead of on render, still not optimal better image/video scaling better local echo various bugfixes

Articles and blog posts

Riot Jouni blog post

Julian on Fractal work

The user can now change the following settings: Avatar, display name, add and remove email addresses and phone numbers. Also, they can see the homeserver and their own MXID.
We will probably make some more small changes on the way to make the UX as good as we possibly can.

Fedora Magazine mention of Fractal

New Riot theme from MTRNord: blueshine

Spec Proposals

Interactive Key Verification: Spec proposal from uhoreg

nheko packaging

nheko openSUSE packaging

nheko 0.4.2-1 package now in Debian

New Rooms, also rooms which happen to be new to benpa

• Not at all new, but check out #riot-themes:matrix.ffslfl.net for discussions on the blueshine theme mentioned above.
• #matrix-docker-ansible-deploy:devture.com - support for those installing their own Matrix homeserver (and related services) with Docker and Ansible, using matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
• SolarDrew's D&D bot development chat: #chatrpg-dev:matrix.org

That's about all for now…

GDPR

• Our long-awaited new privacy policy & term & conditions for the matrix.org server are here - Phase 1 is complete!
• Folks are already accepting the new policies - thanks.
• We're going to start requiring acceptance to access the matrix.org server on Tuesday (May 29th).
• We're already receiving our first GDPR requests… :|
• Erasure and Right-to-be-forgotten work (Phase 2) is next up so we can action the requests in a timely manner.
• It looks like we will go ahead on removing MXIDs on events as a Phase 3 (although for now we do warn people that this is effectively a technical limitation of Matrix, albeit one that we're working on).

Client Updates

mtxclient E2E progress

Fractal

• Translations support
• Number of members in the room in the members button
• File storage configuration support
• Gold and Silver tags for admins and moderatos

gomuks

• A fancy quick room switcher by Evidlo
• A few basic UI options (hide user/room lists)
• Plaintext view to be able to click long links and such
• Fixed some bugs

Riot/Web

• GDPR-capable release! 0.15.4 out today
• Various bugfixes and performance regressions.

Riot/Mobile

• GDPR-capable releases!
• Sticker sending is ready modulo some CSS bugs; we'll get it pushed shortly.

Bridging

JonTheNiceGuy bridging video

Discord bridge

"finished edit passing between Discord and Matrix, as well as support for discord's custom emojis (though UX is a bit manual until TravisR's proposal goes through ?)"

matrix-puppet-facebook-1to1-fixer from Brendan

This small tool will take the local part of the room ID created by the Matrix<>Facebook Messenger bot once the friend has joined it, identify th friend, and grab their avatar and display name to set the room's.

mautrix-telegram

• A dockerfile by jcgruenhage
• Option to whitelist/blacklist automatic bridging of specific chats
• Fixed many bugs

matrix-appservice-sms

I have managed to do the first phase of a massive refactor that makes it way more reliable (temporarily store SMS in the database before delivery)

this makes it more resilient to synapse hiccups, as well as general failures

Other Projects

matrixboard, from betz

opsdroid room state connector

The idea of using the room state to encapsulate bot data per-room was well received, discussion in #TWIM:matrix.org suggests this is an estabilished practice for some developers.

matrix-python-sdk

Ruma

• ruma-events 0.10.0: ruma-events contains Serializable Rust types for the events in the Matrix specification. 0.10.0 sees a major update with code provided by mujx, and contains many breaking changes.
• ruma-api-macros 0.2.2, and ruma-client-api] is also updated to use the new macro.

f0x account migration helper

DSN Traveller by Florian

As part of my master's thesis, I wrote the DSN Traveller bot, which is crawling the matrix federation to measure the shape and size of the matrix network, and how distributed it currently is. The bot is already in a smaller number of rooms for testing, and will join the remaining rooms over the next days. All details at https://dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu/, room at #dsn-traveller:dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu.

Synapse

• GDPR policy management is welcomed in by Synapse 0.30
• Means we get server notices too!
• Explosion of Python 3 activity from notafile & Amber (hawkowl)
• andrewsh has prepared a Debian package for the 0.30 release.

Dendrite

• Anoa is on the case, having joined the core team on Monday - Dendrite is already sending events to ASes! Meanwhile APwhitehat is hacking away on his GSoC projects!

Spec

New Rooms

• notafile alerted us to #synapse-py3:matrix.org a room for discussions specific to the python3 work on synapse.
• #dsn-traveller:dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu to discuss the DSN Traveller, as mentioned above.
• brainblasted introduced #book-talk:disroot.org, "For discussing literature, meaning, and if the movie lives up to the book"
• CromFr shared #lebistrot:matrix.org, "a french room for talking about everything or nothing. Venez dire bonjour!"

GSOC

See you soon

Check out this week's Matrix Live:

On the Web

Enter the Matrix

Presentation about Matrix

Spec Proposals

Next up: try to turn some of the many WIP proposals into Spec PRs...

Fractal Hackfest 2018

A major topic at the Hackfest was a discussion of splitting the Fractal client into two UIs for the different behaviours of messaging apps. For anyone interested in product design thinking this is a genuinely fascinating topic. I encourage you to read "Banquets and Barbecues", Tobias' excellent coverage of the latest thinking. The different chat personas are very well explained and the post brings up some of the immediate technical challenges too.

Projects and Products

mxisd v1.1 RC1 available

mxisd v1.1 RC1 is out, addressing various privacy issues and being more GDPR-friendly overall. Testing and feedback from the community is very much appreciated

Dimension

Ruma

Federation Tester Graphical Frontend

Synapse

• Synapse 0.29 out - pretty much a maintenance release.
• Chunk PRs are landing, providing a long-term solution to the ‘depth' issue which is still impacting #matrix and #matrix-dev.
• Lots and lots of GDPR work - you can follow progress at https://github.com/vector-im/riot-meta/projects/7.
• Fixes SYN-1(!!!) - server notifications in general.
• ...and a last minute update from Andrej Shadura that the official Debian packages for Synapse are now up-to-date in Debian Unstable!!

Riot/Web

• Riot/0.15 is out! With Stickers, Electron 2.0, Firefox E2E speed ups and lots of polishing
• Working on GDPR now - cookie warnings have already landed on /develop, for instance. Remaining is the consent flow, and the deactivation/erasure flow.
• Currently on a blitz to mop up P1 bugs
• Accidental mission to replace Draft with Slate to make the RTE robust.
• Upcoming: enabling Jitsi everywhere; E2E cross-signing; member lazyloading.

Riot/Mobile

• Sticker sending is almost done!
• GDPR work in progress
• Released a fix for unreliable notification (and bg syncing) on Android 8 on Fdroid (released on Wednesday - please update!)

Neo Alpha 0.05

features to bridge better with telegram, like Replies and Stickers, general ui improvement with fontawesome icons added: Replies Receiving stickers

Discord Bridge

headed up by anoa, feedback for this is useful as it's early days, https://github.com/Half-Shot/matrix-appservice-discord/pull/131

gomuks

CromFr doge bot

Independent Client-Server interactions

Honourable mention for mujx, who was sending messages with nheko and Ruma a year ago!

Matrix Core team expansion

• Stève - 17th May (yesterday)
• Amber - 21st (Monday)
• Anoa - 21st (Monday)
• Hubert - 28th May
• Half-Shot - 4th June ...and one more community member, hopefully (just sorting paperwork currently!)

New Rooms

• #matrix-spec:matrix.org is a new room dedicated to discussions on specific matrix spec proposals, as part of the process we're building around contributing to the matrix spec.
• f0x is hosting a new room dedicated to Matrix client developers #matrix-clients:lain.haus
• #test-doge-bot-crom:matrix.org to test CromFr's doge bot.
• #PokemonShit:matrix.org a new room for Pokemon discussion.

Next week in Matrix

So Long...

Check out this week's Matrix Live below, and we'll see you next week!

Fractal Hackfest 2018

The talk of the town in Strasbourg this week was the arrival of Fractal Hackfest 2018! Event is still ongoing, and I'm sure they will provide a report of the progress on https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/Fractal2018, though Alexandre kindly sent us a photo of the group in action

Home Assistants

Wonderful things are happening and being discovered regarding IoT and Home Automation. uhoreg was the first to point us to tinloaf's project to build a Matrix Chatbot component for Home Assistant:

This component allows you to send messages to matrix rooms, as well as to react to messages in matrix rooms. Reacting to commands is accomplished by firing an event when one of the configured commands is triggered.

(this is not the same as notify.matrix https://www.home-assistant.io/components/notify.matrix/, which is used to deliver messages from Home Assistant to a room.)

Enthusiasm for this work led to jfred discussing his past adventures in Matrix, including a component for sibyl, 'a python chatbot with a focus on XBMC' allowing Matrix communication.

All this excitement led to Cadair creating #homeautomation:cadair.com, which has started a more thorough discussion. I'm eager to see more non-chat applications of Matrix, #twim:matrix.org came up with others with projects in progress.

On GDPR

GDPR has been a favourite topic for a while now. If you didn't already, take a look at the latest thinking from the Matrix Core team here: https://matrix.org/blog/2018/05/08/gdpr-compliance-in-matrix/

It's worth noting that we feel that GDPR is an excellent piece of legislation from the perspective of forcing us to think more seriously about our privacy – it has forced us to re-prioritise all sorts of long-term deficiencies in Matrix (e.g. dependence on DNS; improving User Interactive authentication; improving logout semantics etc). There's obviously a lot of work to be done here, but hopefully it should all be worth it!

TravisR on GDPR

TravisR has also been thinking about GDPR, and how it relates to his Voyager bot. In his words:

TWIM: I've mostly been working on figuring out how GDPR affects t2bot.io for the last couple weeks. One of the things running on t2bot.io is Voyager - a bot that tries to join rooms it sees mentioned in people's messages, graphing them on https://voyager.t2bot.io. With the increase in talk about GDPR and more bots starting to wander the federation, the recurring topic of whether Voyager should change its approach to finding and listing rooms.

With the current approach, Voyager reads messages and tries to find room aliases to try and join. Individual people can opt-out of this tracking to stop Voyager from reading/parsing their messages (opting back in at a later time, if desired). The room moderators can kick or ban the bot to completely remove their room from the graph, and can invoke a 'soft kick' if they'd like to have their room remain listed, but don't want the bot in the room. Voyager will make sure to only show information for public rooms and will update the graph if the room flips between public and private.

If anyone has feedback on how this approach could be improved (or if it should be left as-is), please come by #voyager:t2bot.io on matrix to start the conversation.

Translations

I was surprised and excited to learn that a Russian translation of the Matrix FAQ has been produced by a group of Russian-lanugage users. ma1uta reported:

There are a several Russian-speaking users spontaneously decided to unite and help Matrix. We created a room where translated FAQ using the embedded etherpad widget. Some of us are here: Magnolia and Fenneko is a Good Girl for example. Anybody can join to us #perevodators:matrix.org and helps. We accept any help.
Preview: https://ma1uta.github.io/index.html

They've provided a PR which I will presently merge (though of course, as I don't speak Russian I will need to trust that it's really a translation of the FAQ!)

Projects and Updates

Matrix Ruby SDK

Ananace reports that work has begun on a Matrix SDK for Ruby 'with a design based heavily on the Python one'. Doing a lot of sysadmin work, Ananace has been working a lot with Ruby, and also wants to get going using the SDK to write bots.

neo

Neo from f0x released Alpha 0.04.

Added two very ux-improving features, local echo and tab completion. User list, eslinter, auto-retrying requests

Take a look at the changelog for more.

matrixstats.org

a13xmt came to use with https://matrixstats.org, a bot-powered room directory

Public catalog for matrix rooms announced: matrixstats.org. The place where you can find a lot of rooms and sort them by ratings or categories. Presented rooms are collected from different homeservers; some of rooms have detailed statistics. The homeservers itself can be explored without the registration. The project is currently in beta stage, so some features may be missing. We would be glad to receive any feedback and ideas for further improvement. Additional info available at https://matrixstats.org/about, related discussions at #matrixstats:matrix.org.

Quaternion

says kitsune:

TWIM: Quaternion 0.0.9.1 is out, with building/packaging fixes; those who use 0.0.9 need not upgrade (https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion/releases/tag/v0.0.9.1)

Riot/Web

• New release due monday - whether it's 0.14.3 or 0.15 depends on whether we can make the sticker picker fast enough to launch!
• Lots of other polish; E2E is now as fast on Firefox as it is on Chrome!

Riot/Mobile

• Almost all of France has been holiday this week…
• ...although we've got sticker sending mostly working on iOS & Android anyway!

Synapse

• Lots of GDPR work in play - project status being tracked in https://github.com/vector-im/riot-meta/projects/7
• Lots of work implementing chunking for DAGs to properly solve the depth vulnerability

Spec Proposals

Much-needed work has begun to classify and present the spec proposals for the Matrix specification. We've tagged up the all the issues in GitHub, new page will appear on matrix.org at the start of next week if I can just stop preening the generator.

Around the Web (and more)

Another week, another article on the front page of Hacker News. The author is focused more on Riot than Matrix, still it's great knowing how much interest there is in the wild.

Happily, I was at an unrelated event in London earlier in the week, and had my first IRL experience meeting someone who already knew (and then enthused) about the project. Feels good.

Rooms of note

• #homeautomation:cadair.com home automation generally with a natural lean toward matrix
• #perevodators:matrix.org to help with Russian translations
• #matrixstats:matrix.org to find out about matrixstats.org
• #voyager:t2bot.io to talk to TravisR about Voyager

TTFN

Do you have a suggestion for this series? What could we be doing more of? I have a nascent plan to do 'deeper' conversations with people or projects that aren't necessarily in the normal run of things, but are interesting uses of Matrix. Does this sound like something you'd want to read on a Friday afternoon? Drop a line in #twim:matrix.org or ping benpa.

Matrix Ecosystem Updates

Project Updates

Clients

nheko

• Basic member list
• Basic room settings menu
• Support for displaying stickers
• Fuzzy search for rooms

mujx - https://github.com/mujx/nheko - #nheko:matrix.org

Fractal

Fractal of course have their in-person meeting coming up soon, and are looking forward to GSoCers getting onboard.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/fractal - #fractal-gtk:matrix.org

neo

Rollup of changes since last week includes

• settings menu
• mentions
• unread counts
• room invite handling
• video thumbnails

f0x - https://github.com/f0x52/neo/ - #neo_client:matrix.org

gomuks

tulir - https://github.com/tulir/gomuks - #gomuks:maunium.net

Journal

Says Luke:

The big news this week being that I'm going to redesign the interface to focus on the personal blog use-case, optimising for easy setup and easy blog post sharing. And hopefully push a 1.0 release that I'd be happy to use as my own personal blog.

luke - https://journal.ldbco.de/#/journal/journal:ldbco.de

Bridges and other projects

synapse-diaspora-auth

Po Shamil - https://git.fosscommunity.in/necessary129/synapse-diaspora-auth

matrix-appservice-discord

There are several changes moving this project along, but checking out the change list I can see there were a bunch of contributors to thank, (eeeeeta, Sorunome, TravisR), which is super-cool to see.

Half-Shot - https://github.com/Half-Shot/matrix-appservice-discord

GTAD

can generate correct buildable (and runnable) code to convert data structures used in CS API between JSON and C++ - for the entirety of CS API calls. That basically means that libqmatrixclient gains (so far low-level) C++ CS API for all calls in The Spec and will follow updates to it.

kitsune - https://github.com/KitsuneRal/gtad/commits/master

Riot/Web

• We shipped 0.14.2 as an incremental release
• Jitsi by default on the horizon…
• Trying to work our way through the regressions which keep stacking up
• Lots of work on improved UTs for Groups and Replies; discussion about flux stuff
• Next up is E2E verification (at last).

Riot/Mobile

• Replies
• Sticker sending
• Android is now Kotlin enabled!

Synapse

• Handling abuse of the depth parameter; short-term fix deployed and longer term coming along shortly.
• This destroyed progress on the algorithmic perf improvements.
• Half-Shot PRs for negotiating size limits
• Amber is inbound!

Dendrite

• We're behind on PRs - sorry Thibaut :(

Matrix.org Ops

• Ansible stuff is being refactored based on our experiences trying to use it in the wild status.matrix.org is coming soon!

Spec

• Loads of work happening to build the Spec Proposals website, tracking workflow for all the proposals in flux and putting them into a formal RFC-style process. It should help community participation in the spec process massively whilst we finalise the longer term governance model for Matrix.org
• Also looking at publishing formal roadmaps for Synapse, Dendrite and Riot (at last!) - we have them internally these days but need to just chuck them up on the web and maintain them.
• Finally, GDPR work is in full swing.

New(ish) Rooms

• #music-discovery:matrix.org, a place to discuss new music, and
• #unity3d:matrix.org, a place for unity3d fans

Before we go

New Core team member

Matrix Live

Matrix Ecosystem Updates

Big News

GSoC students

Google Summer of Code acceptees were announced, and we're really excited to have FIVE Matrix-related projects to look forward to!

Three of the students will be mentored by matrix.org folk, and two more will work on Fractal under the GNOME org.

• Valentin D. (Zil0) will work on adding E2E to matrix-python-sdk, mentored by RichVDH
• Badrul Chowdhury will develop an alternative to GCM/FCM on Android and APNS on iOS that provides the homeserver with facilities to push notifications, mentored by David Baker
• APwhitehat will work on Dendrite (Federation and Sync Server APIs), mentored by erikj
• Eisha CHEN-YEN-SU will work on a new UI for Fractal, mentored by Daniel García Moreno
• Julian Sparber will work on Fractal UI improvements and some features like a user account settings and a spell checker. Mentored by Daniel García Moreno

Fractal Hackfest 2018

Fractal Hackfest 2018 will take place next month in Strasbourg, hosted by Epitech. They'll be planning a roadmap for the year, and working on their current focus areas.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/Fractal2018

Coverage of French Matrix adoption

After the blog post on matrix.org yesterday, lots of attention developed around the news. Take a look at this Hacker News thread with lots of discussion, which has stayed on the front page for nearly 24 hours, and a megathread on Reddit/r/linux: nearly 1000 upvotes and growing.

Project Updates

Clients

libqmatrixclient

kitsune reports a new release of libqmatrixclient, v0.2.1, this is mostly a bugfix release, fully backwards-compatible with v0.2. Check out the release notes for details.

kitsune - https://github.com/QMatrixClient/libqmatrixclient - #qmatrixclient:matrix.org

Quaternion

Staying in QMatrix-land, there is a pre-release of Quaternion available. Take a look at v0.0.9, improvements include "redactions, file downloading, room creation and settings editing, better timeline visualisation and much more"!

kitsune - https://github.com/QMatrixClient/Quaternion - #qmatrixclient:matrix.org

neo

f0x has been beavering away on neo, and has announced that Alpha 0.01 is available now. neo is a webclient in React, it feels really light and fast. I asked f0x about the uptick in work, and he mentioned he got started with React recently, but likes it a lot.

f0x - https://github.com/f0x52/neo/ - #neo_client:matrix.org

Fractal

Fractal released 0.1.27 with many new features and bugfixes. Lot's going on but I'm most excited to see Markdown support land.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/fractal - #fractal-gtk:matrix.org

Bots

matrix-trello-bot

Says TravisR: "I've whipped together a simple Trello notification bot for matrix: matrix-trello-bot. Future plans include the ability to create/update/delete cards and more granular control of what is notified about. Currently it acts very similar to how the Github notifications bot works."

TravisR - https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-trello-bot - #trellobot:t2bot.io

Others

Matrix DSL

MTRNord is working on a "matrix DSL", basically a config file language that generates a project Template in multiple languages. The project is just now at the discussion stage, so join #matrix_dsl:matrix.ffslfl.net to check out what's going on. (DSL = Domain Specific Language.)

MTRNord - #matrix_dsl:matrix.ffslfl.net

urllib-requests-adapter

Says Coffee: "urllib-requests-adapter has been updated to work with matrix-python-sdk 0.2.0. urllib-requests-adapter is a lightweight replacement for requests and its dependencies, currently standing at 126 SLOC."

Coffee - https://github.com/Matrixcoffee/urllib-requests-adapter

mxisd

mxisd, the Identity Server from kamax, saw a v1.0.2 release, following the big one-point-zero last week. Changes include de-duplicated directory search results, plus bugfixes.

Max - https://github.com/kamax-io/mxisd

matrix-stfu

Missed this one last week, but matrix-stfu from xwiki is a message filtering tool released recently, it can "mass remove everything which was said by a particular user in a particular room". XWiki use matrix as their internal chat system for the ~30 people at the company.

xwiki - https://github.com/xwiki-labs/matrix-stfu - #xwiki:matrix.xwiki.com

Riot/Web

• We're committing to 2-weekly releases come what may, to avoid another massive gap like the one between 0.13 and 0.14.
• RCs will get cut starting from Wednesday; actual release then happens on the Monday having given folks a chance to test the RC on /staging (and to iterate on the RCs).
• Obviously this is flexible if we need to rush out fixes sooner.
• On that note, 0.14.2-rc1 was cut on Wednesday! Please test it at riot.im/staging. It's mainly bugfixes but also the full relayering between riot-web and matrix-react-sdk.
• Dave's working on finally hooking in Jitsi as the default conferencing system
• t3chguy's been working on Replies, which continue to look awesome
• Next up: E2E cross-signing (at last!!!!)

Riot/Mobile

• New releases are out! Mainly preparing for sticker viewing and trying to fix the Android push notification situation. PLEASE TELL US IF YOU ARE STILL HAVING ANDROID PUSH NOTIFICATION PROBLEMS!
• Lots of review of Android by Benoit - adding in Kotlin support as of today and establishing a formal roadmap for Android work (we'll show the blog post when we have it)
• Lots of Matrix-for-French-Government stuff.

Synapse

• Synapse 28.0 was released! A major bump mainly thanks to lots and lots of contributions from the wider community.
• Massive experimental work on GDPR in progress - doing the thought experiment of pseudonymising MXIDs throughout Matrix on a per-room basis so that it's possible to redact MXIDs in the event of a “right-to-erasure” GDPR event. Rich vdH is leading the work.
• The good news is that introducing an MXID abstraction layer like this could help us enormously with some of Matrix's longest-term architectural issues - i.e. account migration and portability; improving on PERSPECTIVEs for managing server identity; future support for P2P Matrix; solving the domain name reuse problem; etc.
• The bad news is that it would obviously be a very significant change to the Matrix spec, although we'd be doing it in such a way which minimises impact to client implementers and keep the CS API looking as similar as possible.
• We're not sure whether we need to rush this through or not yet; still waiting for final GDPR clarification from lawyers, but it feels like this might be a good opportunity to force us to finally tackle some of these harder problems.
• Meanwhile, Erik's Delta State Resolution algorithm work is continuing well; we're hoping to finish & merge it asap in order to get back headroom on the server.
• Thankfully the matrix.org synapse itself has been relatively stable this week, other than being completely overloaded causing Freenode to be almost unusable.
• We've started using Ansible in production, although the playbooks need some iteration before we're fully happy to announce them & recommend folks use them as an official way of running Synapse in production.

try-matrix-now

There is a update out on try-matrix-now, matrix.org's central listing of projects. Try filtering and see whether benpa mangled the metadata for your project. Submit any changes as markdown PRs on the repo.

Spec

benpa is currently working on a Proposals page for the Spec to properly stack spec proposal status, at last!

Articles around the web

Riot: A Distributed Way of Having IRC and VOIP Client and Home Server

uhoreg pointed to some charming coverage over on https://itsfoss.com: Riot: A Distributed Way of Having IRC and VOIP Client and Home Server, by Shirish. The article covers some details about riot-web and the open source ethos of Matrix, but my favourite quote by far:

"Without Matrix, Riot would be like a body without a soul."

Shirish - https://itsfoss.com/riot-desktop/

Service notifs with Matrix

Half-Shot shared an article he wrote, Service notifs with Matrix, about using Matrix and Riot to deliver automated notifications to different types of end-user at his company.

Half-Shot - https://dev.to/halfshot/service-notifs-with-matrix-3fb5

New Rooms roundup

• #matrix_dsl:matrix.ffslfl.net As mentioned above, MTRNord is looking at creating a DSL for matrix. In his words: "A room to discuss about making a Matrix DSL to allow non coders to write simple as and bots. I would love to see some people discussing about syntax with me as this is my very first DSL and very first time trying JetBrains MSP. Anyone with Ideas what it should allow to do and how to have the syntax a welcome to join (and people who want to follow of course too)"
• #trellobot:t2bot.io (from above) TravisR: "a discussion/developer room for Matrix Trello Bot (https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-trello-bot). This is a bot that notifies rooms of changes to tracked Trello boards, similar to how the Github bot works. Future enhancements include being able to create, update, and delete cards from within Matrix."

Lastly...

Matrix Live - Season 2, Episode 17: Apr 27th is now available!

This Week in Matrix is printed fresh every week! There will be another post before you know it, so if you'd like to be included join us in #twim:matrix.org and let us know what you've been working on. See you next week!

Matrix Ecosystem Updates

Drupal matrix_api module

(John) - https://cgit.drupalcode.org/matrix_api

mxisd

(Max) - https://github.com/kamax-io/mxisd

nheko

(mujx) - https://github.com/mujx/nheko

Fractal

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/fractal/

libqmatrixclient

Highlights include redactions support, files transfer (both ways), rooms creation, account data (tags, direct chat flags). Also there are a few things making libqmatrixclient clients stand out compared to, e.g., Riot: one can set per-room names/avatars, and also the best estimate for the number of unread messages can be taken from the library and shown in the client application."

(kitsune) - https://github.com/QMatrixClient/libqmatrixclient

matrix-monitor-bot

It's able to report metrics to Prometheus and has it's own built-in dashboard (see https://lag.t2bot.io/ for some horrendous times). In the coming weeks it'll become more production-ready, however in the meantime if people are looking to help iron out the scalability issues, please run an instance on your homeserver.

(TravisR) - https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-monitor-bot

uMatriks

https://github.com/uMatriks/uMatriks

Construct

matrix-puppet-maxs

(tyler) - https://github.com/tfreedman/matrix-puppet-maxs

matrix-register-bot

(krombel) - https://github.com/krombel/matrix-register-bot

picard

• Invite the slack bot to the channel
• Creating matrix rooms
• Setting users as admins
• Setting room name and room avatar and as publically joinable
• Setting up the link with the slack AS
• Creating and adding rooms to the community
• Inviting all members of the communtiy to the rooms