SàT progress note 2019-W16

goffi il y a 5 ans jabber-xmpp-en SàT project libre SàT progress

Hello everybody,

this is the time for a second progress report.

After the implementation of the button for translations, I've updated the French version of Libervia, and of the new website I'm currently working on (which is not yet online). For now this is done locally using tools like Gtranslator or Poedit, I plan to install at some point a web app like Weblate or Pootle and if possible to integrate is with SàT/XMPP (at least for authentication) to make contributions easier.

Beside that I've mainly been working on photos album, I want to be able to use it with 0.7.
For a bit of background, photo album is a specialized view of file sharing. I've evaluated two XEP (XMPP Extension Protocol) for that:

  • File Repository and Sharing (XEP-0214) which is based on Pubsub and Collections Nodes (XEP-0248)
  • File Information Sharing (XEP-0329) which is a simple way to share a repository

File sharing is usable either with direct sharing of a repository from a device (e.g. photos from a mobile phone), or with a server component which host files.

I've chosed the second one (File Information Sharing) for now because the Pubsub one is based on Collections which is, in my opinion, currently not usable: permissions from collection nodes are overwritting ones of leaf nodes, and as a result a private node can be accidentaly opened. This needs to be addressed, it's not the first time I discard pubsub collections because of that, I'll try to propose changes to standard after the 0.7 release.

The other reason I've chosen "File Information Sharing" (FIS) is that the Pubsub one handles mirrors and versions, which I feeled overcomplicated at the time. With FIS, I could make an implementation quickly, and I have a working UI now, which is already quite usable (see this blog post to see how it looks like).

But when I'm using the component, I have no way to change access (everything is managed, there is just no interface to change it), so when I put a file on the file sharing component, it stays private for now, not ideal when you want to share a photo album.

So I've worked on a quick way to do it, using ad-hoc commands: one to change file/directory permissions, and one to delete files. It's nearly finished and will be the last thing before starting beta phase.

That said, Pubsub has already everything needed to manage access and subscriptions (to know when new files/photos are available), so I plan to re-evaluate XEP-0214 at a later point, and if I still find it ill-adapted, maybe propose an other option.

I've also noticed a couple of CSS issues on the blog engine (mainly some padding around paragraph would make it easier to read), and I've been noticed that link to Atom feed is missing on the blog. I was planning to fix that this week but could not find the time (I'm working on SàT on my free time). So I hope to do this in the next few days.

That's it for this week. I'm looking forward to start debugging phase, and then finally release.