Modern XMPP is an independent project launched to improve the quality of user-to-user messaging applications that use XMPP. […]
We are developing a handful of simple documents aimed at people who wish to build on top of XMPP. The recommendations are derived from healthy discussions between developers from multiple XMPP projects and other members of the XMPP community.
I’m glad XMPP is getting some love. It’s a protocol that has some advantages over Matrix and ActivityPub and even over IRC. (even though adding OMEMO to IRC might be possible, the way XMPP federates is a li’l more flexible than how IRC federates). Not that I’m ready to take all my proverbial eggs out of the ActivityPub, email, or IRC baskets just yet. Email is my doll my dear my darling♥︎ but ultimately from a user perspective, choosing a protocol is about the people on it. I find a lot of awesome stuff on email, on ActivityPub, on IRC and on XMPP so they’re all great in terms of what’s on it. Philosophically is where it doesn’t make sense to keep spending time developing a protocol when there’s a better protocol for the same thing and I don’t know yet which of these four li’l creatures is the best one. I suspect email is the best♥︎
Matrix has a long way to go before it can even go on the same table as these four other pillars of communication but maybe it’ll get there? I’m more inclined to spend my time on the other horses in that particular race but I’ve been wrong plenty of times.
We also intend to provide a comprehensive set of guidelines for UI and UX design.
Not into that. One thing I love about email, XMPP and ActivityPub is the breadth of experiences available.
Having a concrete set of guidelines will help to provide a more uniform user experience between different applications, ensuring they use the same terminology, and provide interoperable feature sets.
Interoperable feature sets through XEP curation, that’s awesome! That’s great! Uniform user experience is the part that sounds like a nightmare. Like, there’s just no way bitlbee + MS Comic Chat can have the same UI or workflow as Snikket, and that’s a good thing. But this is a resource, a tool, not a straitjacket.