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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0007253GNUnetmessenger servicepublic2022-11-21 23:27
ReporterMaurice Assigned To 
PrioritynormalSeverityfeatureReproducibilityN/A
Status newResolutionopen 
Summary0007253: Feature request: Making GNUnet Messenger more accessible & transparent
DescriptionAs a person without a background in programming myself, I would appreciate efforts to make the messenger service GNUnet provides more accessible and transparent for "non-technical" people. With this I mean not just to develop clients for more platforms (altough that could indeed help adoption), but to make switching to GNUnet Messenger from other messaging services as comfortable and transparent as possible. This includes providing:

- a list of *currently supported and stable* features
- a list of *currently supported and experimental* features
- a list of *currently unsupported, but planned* features
- a list of features *supported by other major messaging services, which will not be supported* by GNUnet Messenger

An example: A major usecase of GNUnet in general, but especially relevant for the early adoption of its messaging service are activist groups. As an activist myself, I consider the following list of features to be useful and relevant for this usecase (in no particular order):

- note-to-self (+ easy export)
- archiving/unarchiving chats
- group management (management of privileges like kicking users, starting group calls, deleting messages sent by other users, using @everyone etc.)
- (revokable) group invite link/ qr-code
- editing messages after sending them
- @mentions, incl. @everyone and @role
- forwarding messages to other chats
- saving messages (e.g. forward messages to a chat called "Saved Messages")
- (un)pinning messages in group chats
- view-once-media
- link previews
- PINs for profiles/identities
- (un)linking devices
- deleting messages
- backup & restore chats
- view & save media (photos, videos, pdf, audio files, ...; automatic removal of compromising metadata; storage/download management)
- blocking users
- group chats
- info channels (e.g. for a so-called "Demo-Ticker")
- discussion channels for info channels (e.g. to ask questions or provide feedback)
- folders to sort chats
- group chat icons & descriptions
- polls ("normal" polls and polls for scheduling events; options for anonymous voting, multiple answers and quiz mode)
- 1-1 voice/video calls
- group voice/video calls
- livestreams for info channels (like Clubhouse/ Twitter Spaces)
- reply to messages
- message formatting (e.g. with markdown, like Discord)
- delete multiple messages at once
- Hashtags for easy orientation in group chats
- ...

Some of these features are already supported, others might be planned, while still others might be considered as unlikely to be implemented. But this information should be as transparent and accessible for new users as possible to enable them to assess whether GNUnet Messenger currently fits their usecase or if it might do so in the future.

Also, I would highly appreciate a separate support page and documentation, as Cgit and MantisBT can be fairly unintuitive for people unfamiliar with them.
TagsNo tags attached.

Activities

thejackimonster

2022-06-08 02:38

developer   ~0018921

We can definitely discuss each feature individually. Some of the ones listed above are already implemented/supported (even by the GUI application). But I think one important aspect for such lists is missing. We need to differentiate whether a feature is technically possible/supported via the Messenger service, whether it's implemented in the libgnunetchat library for the client applications and whether it's supported/implemented by the typical client application.

A lot of the listed features here are only visual for example. So these would not need any changes in the service or the library to work on application level.

thejackimonster

2022-11-21 23:27

developer   ~0019470

Currently working on video playback in the messenger-gtk application. So you won't need to open a separate application for that. I will use GStreamer for that like most other media handling. Then I ended up looking into whether I could also use GStreamer for capturing a screen in case of sharing/recording your desktop in chats. Seems totally possible thanks to Pipewire. ^^'

So the only question remaining is whether CADET will have low enough latency for streaming video. But effectively I would say "video calls", "livestreams" and "screen sharing" should come rather quickly once libgnunetchat got a valid solution for high bandwidth streaming in chat rooms. The good part is that encoding/decoding can likely be done in the client application via GStreamer, keeping the streaming back-end potentially pretty generic.

For the next update I'll focus on media playback from local files and maybe some other features like link preview.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2022-06-06 01:12 Maurice New Issue
2022-06-08 02:38 thejackimonster Note Added: 0018921
2022-11-21 23:27 thejackimonster Note Added: 0019470