crossposted from here: https://lemmy.eus/post/10482


I believe that XMPP is one of the best protocols for chat communications there is, and I stand up for it. However, the clients that there are, are not comfortable for most people out there used to apps like Telegram, Whatsapp or whatever.

One can defend current XMPP clients saying that quoting with "> " is the traditional way, or that swiping to quote a message is not worth developing; I have plenty more examples like this.
Well, if you think so, OK, use those clients for yourself, but become aware that many people won’t use XMPP for just this reason.

After saying all this, I want to tell that I am willing to develop a new, modern looking and comfortable client for XMPP. I think of a client for Android in first instance, but I would have no problem on going further.

However, I don’t know programming, so I’m searching programmers who would like to get involved in this.
Although I’m not programmer, I have experience developing software projects, from internationalization to documentation, including ideas about features, testing and all other work there can be.

Will you help me spreading the word? :)

  • marmulak@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    Just out of curiosity, since Telegram’s client is open source, couldn’t someone in theory fork it and then modify it so that it’s actually using XMPP but with a practically identical UI? I understand the changes would not be trivial, as you’d probably have to replace/rewrite a ton of code, but maybe there’s something in there worth using?

    Aside from this, you have a few projects already to look at. Android has Conversations, which is so good that Android doesn’t actually need another client. If something truly bugs you about Conversations you can fork it, as many have done, or maybe a change you propose could be accepted upstream.

    On the PC there is Dino, which so far is my favorite. It is still missing features and needs improvement, but what they’ve done so far is very good. You might want to contribute to that first before writing your own client. It would be best if Dino were ported to other OS’s, but somebody somewhere is working on that I think.

    I also noticed a brand new project called Kaidan which might be the sort of thing you’re after, but it’s in such early stages that it’s not really usable.

    Out of all platforms, it seems Windows users are hurt the most badly by really only having Gajim available. Gajim is usable and has many features, but in my opinion it’s just not good enough.

    You could also check out Movim and see if that works for you. It’s probably the best web interface you can get for XMPP.

    • poVoq@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      There is also UWXP for Windows10/11. Looks pretty nice and lots of development recently.

      • marmulak@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        Is it working? I recommended a Windows friend of mine to check it out, but he said he couldn’t get it to work

        • poVoq@lemmy.ml
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          3 years ago

          Hmm, I have heared so and recently I recommended it to a person online and the response was positive (as in they installed it and it worked apparently).

          I don’t use Windows myself so no idea…