#dev 2023-07-06

2023-07-06 UTC
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aaronpk i can't wait until i can federate my website with threads, it'll be fun to see what happens
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shreyanjain[m] lol
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omz13 I'm sure Threads is all very exciting, but its not available in the EU because of "regulatory worries" (for a snarky take see https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/05/threads_comes_to_uk/)
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[tantek] aaronpk, the moment my threads profile can follow my http://tantek.com @-@ I will post from my site and then repost from my threads profile and see what happens
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Loqi [preview] Tantek Çelik
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aaronpk Good plan
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[tantek] [snarfed] is Bridgy Fed ready to federate with Threads?
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[snarfed] I don't know?
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[snarfed] guess we'll see eventually
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shreyanjain[m] I have a feeling they are probably sticking to Mastodon-flavored AP
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[tantek] shreyanjain[m] they don't have to, that's the rub
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[aciccarello] I thought I saw somewhere said ActivityPub was likely to come in September. And even then, it might be limited to a few select Mastodon instances.
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[tantek] September would be timely
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[Jo] Good Morning. Is this a place to ask for help? Because ive been using https://github.com/PlaidWeb/webmention.js/ to display my webmentions and it worked perfectly and now it doesnt and i kinda cant figure out why. The only site where any should have to appear atm is https://dead.garden/blog/silly-little-cooking-sonnet.html :^[
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[Jo] Oh i forgot thats my meta description
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[tantek] heh
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[KevinMarks] [Jo] try including in the non-minified webmention.js and set a breakpoint to see what it is calling http://webmention.io with
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[KevinMarks] looks like it's calling document.getElementById('"webmention-container"), not finding one, and exiting.
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[KevinMarks] looks like you have a `<div id="webmentions"></div>` but are using
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[KevinMarks] `<script src="/blog/webmention.min.js" data-id="webmention-container" async></script>`
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[KevinMarks] which overrides it. Switch that to
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[KevinMarks] `<script src="/blog/webmention.min.js" async></script>`
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[KevinMarks] to use the default id `"webmentions"`
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[Jo] It works now!! Thank you!!
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[snarfed] not surprisingly, http://threads.net isn't serving host-meta, webfinger, or nodeinfo yet
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[tantek] not surprising, because you don't actually need those to "federate" with "websites" in general, nor with vanilla AP
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[snarfed] that's not fair. they've clearly said their eventual plans are to interoperate with the fediverse, not "websites" or the indieweb. and sure vanilla AP, but in practice all fediverse interop currently does use and require webfinger for @-@ discovery
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[snarfed] if you know of any functioning vanilla AP implementations that don't use webfinger and successfully interoperate with the wider fediverse, I'd be very interested to see them!
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[tantek] in practice they (with 10m+ users) could literally support much simpler methods of identity discovery etc. and "fediverse" sites who wanted to interop would themselves add support for such tech
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[tantek] Threads is already larger than the rest of the "wider fediverse" combined
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[tantek] in < 24h
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[snarfed] if they wanted to blaze a new standards/interop trail, definitely! but that seems unlikely, and it's explicitly not what they've actually said
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[snarfed] we could definitely encourage them to try though!
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[tantek] they have different problems of scale than any other AP instance before. so I would *expect* them to pave new more efficient paths
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[tantek] (or try existing paths until they break)
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[tantek] AP itself has been criticized for being "chatty" numerous times by multiple implementers in this chat for example
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[snarfed] eh they've solved alkl the scale problems internally years ago, they're building this on internal infra that's Meta proprietary and not based on any of these standards. I expect scale for them is orthogonal to any of the standards interop
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[tantek] maybe!
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aaronpk i think tantek is talking about scale *of* the interop
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aaronpk i'm not worried or concerned about internal scalability, but I *am* worried about scalability of activitypub itself
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[snarfed] sure! ok
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aaronpk like if they sent out delete notices like mastodon does, the entire internet will turn into delete messages
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[snarfed] lol
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[snarfed] yeah they have mentioned that concern, and hence the pre-briefings with instance admins
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[snarfed] this kind of standards/decentralized interop is new enough for them from the product side - their mid 2000s experiments notwithstanding - that my guess is they have their hands full just figuring that stuff out with the de facto Mastodon flavored AP + webfinger as is
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[snarfed] I doubt they'd additionally try to extend/change the existing standards/interop usage at the same time. (even if we'd like them to!) if anything, that would fan the flames of people complaining that they're here to embrace extend extinguish
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[tantek] aaronpk++
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Loqi aaronpk has 29 karma in this channel over the last year (95 in all channels)
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[snarfed] closer to vanilla AP, http://threads.net also isn't serving profiles or posts as AS2 yet. notably they ignore conneg and serve HTML even to Accept: application/activity+json . which...have to admit I grudgingly admire. slow golf clap.
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[tantek] [snarfed] as we often ask here, what are the actual use-cases (problems?) that "host-meta, webfinger, or nodeinfo" are solving that aren't solved with say, URL -> representative-h-card?
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vladimyr For now threads.net is nothing more (or less) than another cat skin for Instagram running as giant blob of frontend code hitting their (pre)existing graphql routes
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vladimyr It is hard to tell what they did on backend but right now it seems classic Facebook/Instagram server still running on yesteryear's php and using comet through ajax long polling for instance
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vladimyr I'm quite skeptic that they'll try to turn that pile of technical debt into interoperable actpub server but they might just add another one accessing same user data underneath
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vladimyr Existence of that thing right now is purely speculative but time will tell
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vladimyr i.e. don't expect this thing to walk or quack like fedi duck 🙃
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[snarfed] [tantek] of course. I'm not trying to analyze or design or build anything. just making an observation
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[snarfed] vladimyr it's Python, as IG always was, but otherwise agreed
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[snarfed] AP is a messaging protocol, not an infrastructure spec or design, so their internal implementation is largely orthogonal. and Meta's internal infra has evolved more and scaled way more than AP, so I wouldn't dismiss it as "yesteryear" or "pile of technical debt"
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[snarfed] much the opposite, as [tantek] mentions, the AP world can probably learn a lot from Meta on scaling and technical design
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aaronpk AP is a messaging protocol that creeps a bit too much into infrastructure specification 😬
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[snarfed] for data CRUD, maybe. but that's still pretty narrow
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[tantek] conneg-- and shippingwithoutconneg++
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Loqi conneg has -24 karma in this channel over the last year (-32 in all channels)
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Loqi shippingwithoutconneg has 1 karma over the last year
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[KevinMarks] I'm sure they could knock up an AP read API over their GraphQL easily enough it's getting all the message sending right thats harder, and that's before you deal with the webfinger stuff
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[tantek] exactly, all the message sending
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[tantek] hence the "chattiness"
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[snarfed] agreed
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[snarfed] and you all are right, scaling that traffic volume might not be hard for Meta, but might be for much of the fediverse, which we can assume they still care about
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[tantek] which is why I think they are looking to federate with "big" instances first, instead of plowing over smaller instances
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[KevinMarks] and this is a good point from the infrastructure PoV too - when the fash pile-ons happen, that could DoS a mastodon instance, as well as harming users https://octodon.social/@siege/110664945650729936
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vladimyr Meta's infra scales because it has to but it doesn't change numerous ugly facts it's tainted by:
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vladimyr 1/ they have so much legacy php code they had to come up with hack vm aka performant php reimplementation
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vladimyr 3/ instagram also resulted in another python implementation because there was too much code and it simply wasn't performant enough
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vladimyr 2/ they had so much php devs it was simply easier and cheaper to build react as way of molding frontend into their comfort zone than actually embracing it
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vladimyr And indeed as you already said they could easily drown rest of fediverse with ap messages if they ever start to send them out
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[snarfed] unrelated, interesting, aaronpk, Mastodon fixed that profile link hack, eg yours now shows http://google.aaronparecki.com on https://indieweb.social/@aaronpk@aaronparecki.com (logged in)
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aaronpk oh hah
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aaronpk hm, not on mastodon.social yet
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aaronpk mastodon.social is on 4.1.2 nightly, but indieweb.social is on 4.1.3 🤔
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aaronpk nightly build dated yesterday
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aaronpk oh 4.1.3 was released 2 hours ago?? how did indieweb.social update so fast 😂
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[snarfed] cc [timothy_chambe]
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[tantek] [timothy_chambe]++ is on it!
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Loqi [timothy_chambe] has 2 karma in this channel over the last year (26 in all channels)
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[snarfed] the AS2 attachment.value contents are the same in https://aaronparecki.com/aaronpk and https://indieweb.social/@aaronpk@aaronparecki.com , they must be rewriting it before they serve it
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Loqi [preview] Aaron Parecki
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aaronpk wow it got a CVE
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aaronpk "Fix verified links possibly hiding important parts of the URL (CVE-2023-36462)"
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[snarfed] https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/commit/32ebeed59ba424732130073474fe03699efe07fc
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[snarfed] yeah the CVE came from https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/security/advisories/GHSA-55j9-c3mp-6fcq
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vladimyr No more verified google.com 😿
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aaronpk was fun while it lasted
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aaronpk aaand now mastodon.social is updated to 4.1.3 nightly
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aaronpk guess i'll remove that link now
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vladimyr Time for you to build the basis for new CVE, make it alert-able this time :D
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[tantek] new idea for a social network: Retreads — where the only thing you can do is follow people and repost other posts. Oh wait, was that how Tumblr started?
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[tantek] logo: :wheel:
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vladimyr Initial posts seed is made by author and remains constant through the lifetime of service?
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[tantek] oh no, repost other posts *from anywhere* on the broader social web (IndieWeb, AP etc.)
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Saphire [tantek]: you mean cohost
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[tantek] and a new feature (which I'm pretty sure nothing implements yet, so it would be interesting to see how it fits into all the strict post taxonomies out there), reply-reposts
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Saphire (and tumblr)
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Saphire Wait
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Saphire ...this is reddit
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Saphire Reddit is literally "share links to other stuff" kinda, or half of it is
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[tantek] so yes you can *reply* to posts on Retreads, but only by again, reposting a post from somewhere else
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[tantek] no a /repost is not a /bookmark
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Saphire OH YEAH, HACKER NEWS
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[tantek] what is Reddit
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Loqi Reddit is a link aggregator and bulletin board site where community members may submit links and text posts, vote on the submitted entries, and post comments on them https://indieweb.org/Reddit
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Saphire what is orange site
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "orange site" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "orange site is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[tantek] ^ not reposting
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[tantek] What is Hacker news
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Loqi Hacker News is a bookmark posting silo as well as a silo for comments on those links https://indieweb.org/Hacker_News
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[snarfed] IndieNews?
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[tantek] orange site is /Hacker_News
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Loqi ok
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[snarfed] I guess technically that's bookmarks too
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[tantek] yup
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[tantek] bookmarks != reposts — they are HUGELY different in UX
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shreyanjain[m] hmm how does the reddit api stuff affect bridgy
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[snarfed] maybe key point is they don't really have per-user following or feeds
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[tantek] what is IndieNews
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Loqi IndieNews is an indieweb news aggregator, similar to Hacker News, which only accepts submissions via webmention https://indieweb.org/IndieNews
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[snarfed] shreyanjain Bridgy is fine, https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/1492
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[tantek] submissions != reposts
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Loqi [preview] [snarfed] #1492 Handle new Reddit API rate limits and pricing
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Saphire What is cohost
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Loqi Cohost is a social networking site built by https://antisoftware.club https://indieweb.org/Cohost
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Saphire "poorly drafted" feels like a bit of a strong one
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Saphire "Was claimed to have a poorly drafted..."?
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Saphire Yes yes passive voice but that entire thing was blown out of the proprtion for a site held up by like 4-5 people
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vladimyr They actually gained substantial userbase?
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gRegor I think it's OK. We can always add bullet points under criticism like that to add individual thoughts on why we think it's valid or not. It doesn't have to represent a community consensus or be journalistic, just capturing criticism that occurred.
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vladimyr Interesting article: https://jakearchibald.com/2023/against-self-closing-tags-in-html/
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gRegor I've been slowly trying to get out of that xhtml habit, heh
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gRegor Had no idea the space in " />" was for Netscape compat
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gRegor It's nice that validator.w3.org adds info alerts "Trailing slash on void elements has no effect and interacts badly with unquoted attribute values."
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[tantek] nah, I have found explicit /> closing of "self-closing" tags to be useful as documentation and for reprocessing such content with PHP
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[tantek] have to disagree with Jake here, though it may be a matter of opinion and different experiences. in my experience it has been helpful to both quote attribute values, and use explicit /> to close "empty" tags as it were. it has made it easier to find *other* bugs in my markup
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[tantek] perhaps Jake's experience is different 🤷‍♂️
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shreyanjain[m] i agree with [tantek] here
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rubenwardy I recently removed all the unnecessary /> from my sites for the detailed reasons
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[tantek] in addition, from my experience (ages ago) teaching beginners how to code in HTML, explicit /> made it easier for them to both write and read their code they had written and know when a close tag was needed and when it wasn't
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rubenwardy the point the article makes is that /> is effectively ignored anyway, it's misleading to include it - a beginner may try to do <i /> or <div />
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rubenwardy I'd say it's only a good idea if you have a static analysis that requires you to /> self closing tags and not use it on tags with children
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aaronpk I do think that it's weird that you have to just memorize which tags are self closing
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rubenwardy yeah
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vladimyr Aren't you memorizing that anyway? I mean you have to know which tags allow for content be placed inside and which dont
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rubenwardy yeah there's no way around it, with /> or not
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rubenwardy it's weird that iframes aren't self closing, for example
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rubenwardy I guess that was for backwards compat
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vladimyr Is it? I always thought that's intentional and serves signal purpose similar to noscript
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vladimyr Place content there and it will get rendered if iframe's aren't supported?
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[tantek] correct, there is no way around memorizing the few tags that are self-closing, and yes iframe element content is similar in that regard to video and audio tags
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[schmarty] Explicitly marking self-closing tags can be a big help while learning which are which. Recognition over recall and all that.
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[tantek] ^ precisely this. well said
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[tantek] also even as an "experienced" HTML author, I have found it is less cognitively jarring to see explicitly closed empty tags, than the general recognition impulse of, oh there's the open tag, where's the, no nevermind it's one of those special ones
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[tantek] it literally takes me less mental energy to read HTML source with explicitly closed empty tags than not
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[tantek] again, might be a personal experience specific thing 🤷‍♂️
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[schmarty] Also, code editors *could* probably help catch a lot of this now but it's often not clearly an "error" that a closing tag was missed until you look at how a browser has interpreted the page. That's still the source of a lot of frustration in my work!
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[tantek] so I write (and generate) my own HTML source to take less mental energy to read
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[tantek] also, less mental energy/attention spent on innocuous things means more mental bandwidth (sensitivity?) to spot *actual* errors
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[0x3b0b] I can't recall what it was, but I'm pretty sure I used an editor once where the formatter for HTML would increase your indentation if you didn't explicitly close the empty tag. That probably did more to reinforce the habit for me than anything else.
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aaronpk TIL HTTP "Prefer: respond-async" https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7240#section-4.1
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[snarfed] needs Prefer: respond-sync
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[snarfed] (viz https://fed.brid.gy/docs#error-handling )
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vladimyr Hm, good to know, thanks for sharing aaronpk !
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vladimyr Seems like every RFC I've been reading lately is authored by https://github.com/jasnell
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[KevinMarks] I hate that Vscode autoinserts a </p> when I type a <p> as that's often the exact opposite of what I want
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[KevinMarks] It also displays successive <p> as nested in the breadcrumbs bar which is just wrong
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[0x3b0b] Depending on what extension(s) you're using that might be per-element configurable
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[0x3b0b] I think it's built in now for actual html files, though, the extensions are for languages where you may have an html block in a file that is something else...well, I found an extension that can replace the built-in functionality and make it work like Sublime Text instead, but not one that lets you exclude specific elements, so I guess I'm wrong again
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[0x3b0b] Oh, I take it back. The extension does have that.
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gRegor Ooh, instance-agnostic Mastodon share tool: https://toot.kytta.dev/ Found via "Respond on Mastodon" link at the bottom of https://vonexplaino.com/blog/posts/article/2023/07/playing-with-indieweb-ring-s-code.html
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