From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on dcvr.yhbt.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-ASN: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.2 required=3.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_00, DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,DKIM_VALID_EF shortcircuit=no autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6 Received: from localhost (dcvr.yhbt.net [127.0.0.1]) by dcvr.yhbt.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 621A41F4B8; Sun, 28 Apr 2024 17:58:14 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=80x24.org; s=selector1; t=1714327094; bh=2oerK41YZ62+tPkylpbRKEs6V37s40mMasKuzcDsBpE=; h=Date:From:To:Subject:From; b=MBx70TplyRPsJHI7hOXS+qNAQsShsrcs4Kjw5kFXcP52QUVdzIzedJYKObSAMCM9m oSGbXOlTgE6pkFS+2Itk/xEaEGnLK4bKqePSrHZTtH0qdzTGWH+o4z0Uh8wEqOSprJ f1NfVGkhhYrVVkY31YciOY7DJkU6ygUFmzgurbM0= Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 17:58:14 +0000 From: Eric Wong To: meta@public-inbox.org Subject: ActivityPub vs email - cultural differences Message-ID: <20240428175814.M304854@dcvr> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline List-Id: I've been looking into AP off and on over the last year. While the technical side is certainly feasable, I'm not sure how to deal with the cultural differences... * AP allows limited HTML, sometimes sourced from Markdown; but tags seem supported by all implementations. Even snac2 (a minimalist AP implementation packaged for Debian) supports images :< I expect the public-inbox audience would be repulsed by needless use of HTML and images in AP messages if they get mirrored to mailing lists... Mirroring + displaying user-supplied images or video isn't acceptable to me for legal and mental health reasons. Not to mention the cost of storing these things (especially in git). * line wrapping: mail users typically expect wrapping at a reasonable line length (e.g. 64-72 columns), and this is expected for git commit messages (and code) by most projects. AP (and some MUAs) expect the device to wrap, too; but it's probably not welcomed by most mailing list users. * Emojis - ugh, at least Perl has charnames::viacode in the standard library to ASCII-fy undisplayable glyphs for terminals. I ended up cloning over 200MB of emoji graphics just to read the Python code for a JS-free AP implementation designed for low-power devices... * Post vs Note - AP makes a distinction between Posts and Notes, with the latter being more casual (I think). Emails don't have this distinction, but perhaps SSIA (Subject Says It All) emails would qualify as a Note. * Quoting - seems like mainly an email thing, but I really don't see the point of quoting anymore given the existence of reliable and easily-mirrored public archives. It's also a waste of storage, bandwidth and Xapian index space. * Signatures - they're a waste of space in email, so I'm glad they don't seem to be a thing in AP. Maybe some other things, too...