#dev 2023-01-31

2023-01-31 UTC
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GWG I missed a whole IndieAuth thing. Darn
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[tantek] has anyone tested how much CSS passes through / into Mastodon views of posts?
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[snarfed] afaik none, https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/#sanitization , but that's only implied, feel free to try!
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[snarfed] you could check if you had any CSS inside previous e-contents that you've federated
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[tantek] I have not. but I think I may try one soon
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[tantek] whoa! "The sanitizer will keep classes if they begin with microformats prefixes or are semantic classes"
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[tantek] also this reinforces the practice of syndicating article name + link instead of full article contents
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[tantek] to Mastodon / fedi
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[tantek] because removing things like headings h1 h2 h3 etc. or blockquote or ul ol li or replacing them all with p is absolutely not acceptable
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[tantek] that's one way to mangle many (most?) serious blog posts with sections etc
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[tantek] [snarfed] if we ever needed a firm "this is why" for federating article posts only by name and permalink, this is it
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aaronpk i have a list of allowed tags in monocle, but it is a pretty generous list of basic html tags like headings and lists
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[tantek] I *could* see an argument/proposals for article name + e-summary + permalink in syndicating to Mastodon / fedi
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[tantek] but that's about it
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[tantek] Wow I'm getting errors trying to connect to mastodon.social: "Secure Connection Failed / An error occurred during a connection to mastodon.social. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR / Error code: PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR ...
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[tantek] like https://mastodon.social/ — anyone else?
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aaronpk same, but worked the second time
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starrwulfe[m] uploaded an image: (18KiB) < https://libera.ems.host/_matrix/media/v3/download/matrix.org/phLbHWGURwffdzkLREktbSxq/image.png >
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[tantek] https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/mastodon
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[tantek] aaronpk, downforeveryoneorjustme has been seeing problems for an hour
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starrwulfe[m] ...and we;re back
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aaronpk lol "is mastodon down" doesn't make sense as a sentence tho
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[tantek] sure, they're just using the domain after the TLD
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starrwulfe[m] well my mastodon is up... (mastodon.cloud)
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[tantek] I wonder when we're going to need to start creating pages for specific masto instances
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starrwulfe[m] Soonish. The disambiguation is needed
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[tantek] what is thundering herd
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "thundering herd" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "thundering herd is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[tantek] ^ [KevinMarks] I feel we're going to need to define that soon for both the old meaning and the new problem (Masto servers hammering links for link previews)
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[tantek] Interesting (and a bit hilarious), the Wikipedia computing definition is for an *even older* kind of thundering herd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundering_herd_problem
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[snarfed] fwiw Mastodon itself already renders articles as just name + permalink, no content. https://fed.brid.gy/docs#which-parts
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[tantek] Interesting. Then I suppose the question is if there any other fedi followers that behave differently
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[0x3b0b] My secondary account is on an Akkoma instance with the Mangane front-end. It shows my articles as a title linking to the article on my site/instance, followed by the first 700 characters or so of the article cut off by a "Read more >" which leads to a full local view of the article (still with the title link to my site at the beginning), and the local view...keeps my paragraphs, emphasis, strong, and code formatting, but *not* headers.
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[0x3b0b] Interesting, hadn't noticed that detail before.
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[jacky] ooh akkoma looks cool
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[jacky] https://akkoma.social/
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[jacky] ah it's on top of plemora
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[0x3b0b] By contrast, I can't figure out a way on infosec.exchange to view my profile or any of my posts - basically anything except the fact that I exist - without getting redirected to my site. I've been meaning to check on their federated timeline right after I make a post to try to figure out whether federation is failing.
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aaronpk you need to have an account on the instance to see remote content
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[snarfed] s/on top/a fork/ https://coffee-and-dreams.uk/development/2022/06/24/akkoma.html
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[snarfed] aaronpk++
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Loqi aaronpk has 33 karma in this channel over the last year (95 in all channels)
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[snarfed] that's worth adding to the BF docs
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aaronpk true
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[0x3b0b] aaronpk: That depends on the context and the instance. I can view their federated timeline and look at posts from other instances as presented on their instance, but remote profiles redirect to their home instances. And on Indieweb.social I can view my local profile (https://indieweb.social/@0x3b0b@bw3.dev) but since nobody there follows me, that's all (and all I'd expect). I *do* have followers on infosec.exchange.
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[snarfed] 0x3b0b if you're logged into indieweb.social, you'll be able to view remote profiles and posts there. eg https://indieweb.social/@snarfed.org@snarfed.org
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[0x3b0b] But I once scrolled through the infosec exchange federated timeline to a point at which I thought I'd posted something and didn't find it - which made sense later, when I realized what I'd gone looking for shouldn't have been in the timeline due to its visibility 🤦, but I haven't subsequently verified that federation to that instance is in fact working as expected. I also don't remember why I suspected it wasn't, though.
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Loqi [preview] single entendre    (noun, humorous) A phrase that has a single, often bawdy, meaning and is lacking in subtlety or cleverness.
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[0x3b0b] [snarfed]: I don't have an account on indieweb.social, so both that link and the one I posted actually redirect to our respective sites, but if I actually search for myself there, the search result takes me to a local representation of my profile with that URL, whereas at infosec.exchange even the search result redirects me to my site.
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[snarfed] right! we
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[snarfed] er sorry, we're all agreeing. logged in, you can see remote profiles/posts inside Mastodon. logged out, they redirect
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aaronpk i just went to infosec.exchange, logged out, searched for myself, and i see my profile there
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[0x3b0b] Ah, yes. That is accurate. What I was pointing out is the difference in behavior of the search. I'm not logged in to either instance, but the search results behave differently. And then there are some instances where you can't search at all without being logged in.
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[0x3b0b] ...huh. Your profile doesn't redirect me either. Clearly I don't understand what's going on.
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[0x3b0b] 🤦 I was mistaken about what I was testing. I had not logged out of my website. I hadn't expected that to make a difference.
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[snarfed] oh interesting, that's true for BF profiles too. direct URLs like https://mas.to/@snarfed.org@snarfed.org redirect if you're logged out, but searching for @snarfed.org@snarfed.org on https://mas.to/search and then clicking shows the profile instead of redirecting
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[snarfed] 🤷
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Loqi [preview] single entendre    (noun, humorous) A phrase that has a single, often bawdy, meaning and is lacking in subtlety or cleverness.
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[jacky] also https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109781490892884305
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Loqi [preview] [Eugen Rochko] I believe mastodon.social might be under a DDoS attack currently, investigating. Sorry for the inconvenience!
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[jacky] re: [tantek] and the herd
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@cagrimmett ↩️ On my regular blog/personal site, no. On my digital garden, yes, because I use pages as my primary post type and want pingbacks/trackbacks/webmentions to show up there, all of which are tracked as comments. (twitter.com/_/status/1620258303761678338)
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[jacky] [snarfed] ah yeah, that's the civics leaking out heh (had to explain what a fork was a lot recently and describing it as someone placing something on top of another helped)
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[0x3b0b] Also I have now finally found an instance other than my own site where my reply to Tantek from the other day can actually be viewed threaded as such. Hooray.
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[0x3b0b] (...without being logged in.)
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@kecrily 很久之前就了解到 Webmention，但一直没用。 今天试了一下，发现 Twitter 的结构化评论会被拆成无关联的多个评论。 导致最后产生的评论列表一片混乱，阅读困难，还在考虑要不要实际部署。 (twitter.com/_/status/1620385282137944065)
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gRegor [tantek], [snarfed], any experience with how Mastodon/BF handles <blockquote>?
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gRegor I'm about to try it
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[snarfed] it strips it. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/#sanitization
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gRegor Aha, thanks
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[snarfed] example: https://snarfed.org/2023-01-30_49175 vs https://indieweb.social/@snarfed.org@snarfed.org/109780995380113814
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Loqi [preview] [Ryan Barrett] single entendre (noun, humorous) A phrase that has a single, often bawdy, meaning and is lacking in subtlety or cleverness.
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gRegor heh, I should have checked the chat logs
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[tantek] yeah that's sad
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[tantek] the stripping of semantic elements like that
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[tantek] I thought we had documented something along these lines in comments-display, like what what HTML is allowed, how much etc. on people's implementations
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[snarfed] https://indieweb.org/sanitize
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gRegor With that heads up, though, I'm ok with what ended up on Mastodon. Made sure to include quotation marks inside the blockquote so it's still clear I'm quoting something.
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[tantek] thanks [snarfed]++
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Loqi [snarfed] has 70 karma in this channel over the last year (112 in all channels)
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gRegor Did get an extra line space on Masto since I have <blockquote><p>, but that's minor
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gRegor So masto added `<p></p>` before the quote paragraph
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[tantek] welp now I see that page needs some gardening
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gRegor what is sanitize
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Loqi sanitize, specifically "sanitizing HTML", "sanitizing for (display inside) HTML", or "sanitization" is a common operation performed by any site which displays content from external sources, including user entry https://indieweb.org/sanitize
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[tantek] how I have to find that Mastodon URL again
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[tantek] oh it's right there. somehow assumed there was a lot more scrollback
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[manton] On block quotes… I recently changed Micro.blog to automatically convert block quotes to be surrounded with quotes when sending via ActivityPub, so it looks better on Mastodon. I wish Mastodon would display just a little bit more HTML.
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[tantek] hah, maybe the way to push for that is to advocate for: Support blockquotes, not quote-tooting!
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[aciccarello] haha
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[tantek] [manton] what does HTML micro.blog support (or filter in/out) when displaying syndicated (input via Atom feed) content on a micro.blog profile? I'd like to document that in /sanitize
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[manton] Yes. I think quote-toots are unnecessary… Just use blockquote, and everything looks good anywhere on the web.
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[tantek] ^ this
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[aciccarello] [manton] Are you able to determine if a server is mastodon or do you do that for all ActivityPub servers?
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[manton] [tantek] There’s a list here under “Allowed HTML tags”: https://help.micro.blog/t/timeline-display-rules/29
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[tantek] I was only half-joking. I do believe that if we established "allow blockquote" as a cross-site posting/syndication thing, that we could eliminate most of the handwringing about quotetweets/toots
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[tantek] thanks [manton] I figured there would be a good docs page 🙂
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[manton] [aciccarello] All ActivityPub servers. I probably could detect Mastodon servers… But I guess the problem is knowing what other servers would support blockquote.
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[aciccarello] True. I was wondering if there was any way to avoid sinking to the lowest common denominator experience in AP
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[manton] It’s a good question. Right now I’m only testing with Mastodon just trying to get it as good as possible.
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[snarfed] ok now I'm curious. let's see...Pleroma: evidently supports more, https://docs-develop.pleroma.social/frontend/user_guide/posting_reading_basic_functions/#rich-text , haven't found details yet though
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[snarfed] Friendica: https://wiki.friendi.ca/docs/bbcode
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[tantek] some really interesting allow-list of HTML tags differences between WordPress and micro.blog, take a look: https://indieweb.org/sanitize#Software_Examples
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[tantek] [manton] I suspect there are some tags in the WordPress list that you may be interested in explicitly allowing in micro.blog
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[tantek] [snarfed] could you add those to https://indieweb.org/sanitize#Software_Examples ?
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[snarfed] yup
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[tantek] at some point I wonder if we're going to need a table, tags as column headers, software as row headers
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[manton] [tantek] Thanks. Yeah, I don’t see a problem with supporting some of those… I’ve basically expanded the list of allowed tags as I run into something that is common.
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[tantek] abbr would be my personal request. I use that with title attr quite a bit in my blog post (like nearly every article 😂 )
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[manton] Hmm. I’ll admit I haven’t abbr in a long time. I forget its there. 🙂
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[tantek] I tend to blog about a lot of W3C (like that) jargon / terms and try to always expand first use with an abbr
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[tantek] IMO it's a key accessibility feature
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[KevinMarks] No <s> or <q>, or <dl><dt><dd> then?
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[KevinMarks] The elk.zone masto app renders some markdown
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[manton] I don’t like client apps parsing Markdown. HTML is a better format for this, because then things work (mostly) the same everywhere on the web: web browsers, feed readers, Mastodon clients, etc. Even a subset of HTML is much more flexible than Markdown.
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[KevinMarks] Agreed. I was amused that dw got both things he asked for while claiming something else.
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[manton] I should catch up on that thread and maybe jump in. I think folks are often thinking too much in terms of tweets/toos as something special that exists apart from the web.
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[manton] Where to me, microblog posts are just fragments of web pages.
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[snarfed] in a practical sense though, they are right, especially with Mastodon 4 going JSDR, and the majority of microblog/fediverse usage happening in apps ☹
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aaronpk i'll just mention again that mastodon/activitypub isn't really "web" at all
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[tantek] [manton] you get it. "just fragments of web pages" is exactly right
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[tantek] aaronpk, that makes it hard to consider in scope of anything "social web" then, like a community group for example.
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[tantek] I'd prefer we treat mastodon/ap as *trying* to be web, and keep nudging it back in that direction. I think we'll get better results/interop that way.
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[snarfed] tantek++
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Loqi tantek has 21 karma in this channel over the last year (77 in all channels)
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paulrobertlloyd Hi @aaronpk; trying to run an instance of Atlas, but is been a long time since I’ve done anything with PHP. How do you serve the app, Apache/Nginx? (My host uses Nginx). Do I need to set up one of the folders as the root perhaps?
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aaronpk paulrobertlloyd: i use nginx, and yes point the web root at the "public" folder. you'll also need to run "composer install" to intsall the dependencies
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[KevinMarks] Mastodon was web and has deviated, in fact is moving against the trend to server side rendering AKA actual Web
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paulrobertlloyd I’m using Railway with Nixpacks, turns out setting environment variable LARAVEL=yes points the nginx config to the right folder. Is this a Laravel app? Anyway, some sort of progress, but now getting an error from Savant3: https://paulrobertlloyd-atlas-production.up.railway.app
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paulrobertlloyd Am thinking composer install was run, but maybe not…
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aaronpk hm that might be a php version issue
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aaronpk i haven't updated it for php8 stuff yet, can you run it under 7.4?
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paulrobertlloyd Ah… I’ll have gander. If not, will see what bits need updating to work with PHP8.
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aaronpk oh and it's not a laravel app but probably that "LARAVEL=yes" setting makes it serve the "public" folder
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paulrobertlloyd Righteo… having a poke around with a locally running copy. Thanks for the pointers!
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paulrobertlloyd aaronpk++
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Loqi aaronpk has 34 karma in this channel over the last year (96 in all channels)
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[tantek] also good to see you paulrobertlloyd++
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Loqi paulrobertlloyd has 1 karma in this channel over the last year (4 in all channels)
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[tantek] big fans here of IndieKit++
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Loqi IndieKit has 1 karma over the last year
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paulrobertlloyd Hey tank, and why, thank you ☺️
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paulrobertlloyd *tantek
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paulrobertlloyd Focusing my attention back on my own website for a bit, thus the Atlas question.
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paulrobertlloyd Seems like Savant3 + PHP8 is a no go. Wondering if there are any modern equivalents… man, this stuff is never easy! Yak shaving all the way down.
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[tantek] has anyone watched this video about how to improve social media interop? https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook
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[tantek] [Paul_Robert_Ll] I sympathize with the PHP8 frustrations. It broke CASSIS and I haven't had time to track down how to fix it
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gRegor [tantek], I need to double check, but I think it's mostly that one file which is supposed to be generated for each release. Running that fresh *I think* made it work under PHP8
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gRegor https://github.com/tantek/cassis/issues/37#issuecomment-1381017238 I'm not sure how to do that in Github Actions though
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Loqi [preview] [gRegorLove] I'm taking another look at this. From [shortly after](https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2022-10-27#t1666829194999700) this issue in the chat logs, looks like we need to automate running post-process.php in GitHub Actions for new releases.
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[tantek] Oh really? I thought PHP8 was choking on something in the source of cassis.js
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gRegor The error I got was in file cassis.php, which is generated by post-process.php
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gRegor I'll try it again tonight with fresh eyes, but that's the info from chat logs and github
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[tantek] it's a pretty "dumb" post-process IIRC so can you check to see if the same error exists if you "just" directly use cassis.js? There should never be a "need" to use the file "cassis.php" — that file is purely a "smaller file" microoptimization
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gRegor The context was the /this-week PHP script, so it was using cassis.php
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[tantek] doesn't seem like a good use-case for a filesize optimization unless I'm missing something
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[tantek] better to have it directly use cassis.js, fewer moving parts that way
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gRegor Yeah, I honestly don't even remember how it's using it. Just ran into the bug trying to get this-week set up locally for a PR
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gRegor I don't see anything obvious in the code so far that's using it, so not sure. cassis.php is autoloaded by Composer