Asiel Díaz Benítez wrote:
the hoops because you are not actually using Delta Chat???
We were both using Delta Chat!!! We were messaging each other and
getting errors and not getting through and messages were
bouncing. The way Delta Chat to Delta Chat always worked in the
past for many many years was that one person would send one
unencrypted message and then from then on messages both ways
(including thwe immediet reply) would be encrypted and that
suddenly didn’t work and luckily the guy found out about sending
the link thing instead of giving up which I’m sure many people
would’ve done!!! I sure was ready to before he found that
solution.
of course if you do nerdy stuff you are going to need to do
more involved things
Sending a message to someone when all you have their user name is
what’s NOT nerdy. It’s what you can do normally on OMEMO, Signal,
Proton, Matrix, all other apps I’ve ever heard of from ICQ to
SMTP to text messages and phone calls.
final note: we work for people that want to use Delta Chat, and
that is our priority, we don’t have lots of time and resources to
spend in making it nice to chat between Delta Chat and Emacs
You have it completely backwards.
It’s not “Ooooh I really love using Emacs to email it’s so great
I wish it was easier to email to Delta Chat people”. That always
works without a hitch.
It’s actually the other way around. When ever Delta Chat can’t do
something properly I have to use Emacs as a fallback in order to
be able to do it. And that happens many many many times a week.
Most often when I want to start a chat with someone without the
embarrassing “Meddelande från Sandra Snan” subject line. I have
to send the first message from a normal mail app. Any normal mail
app—mine just happens to be Emacs because it works over SSH.
Including this time with the chatmail onboarding process because
one of the things he tried was that he tried the “new mail”
thread but all our messages in there kept on being unencrypted.
Until I went and replied from Emacs which solved it. But that
wasn’t on his chatmail server which he then wanted to change to
so that’s when we had to go with the link solution.
All of my “I wish Delta Chat could do this or that” (like import
non-autocrypt PGP keys like any other mail app can this side of
junk like Hey) is because I want to use Delta Chat. Every
single one of my problems are all as a Delta Chat user from
within Delta Chat.
And, not only that, another reason I sometimes have to use Emacs
is when Delta Chat just crashes and can’t run, like on this
InkPalm that I bought to have as a Delta Chat device and it can’t
even run Delta Chat because two GIGA bytes of ram isn’t even
ough, it’s been great to have Emacs as a fallback so I don’t
suddenly lose all my contacts. But here the link solution to
start talking to someone on Chatmail, that solution requires
literally Delta Chat and me having to go get another tablet that
can actually run Delta Chat just to talk to him. (If he sends a
vcard, that’s fine, but neither of us realized that solution).
That is vendor lock-in and creating an app that can only talk
to itself and we already have too many of those messenger apps.
XKCD standards 
Embrace—“hey, we use email!”
Extend—“hey, now you can quickly create accounts easily!”
Extinguish—“hey, now you need specifically our app, we’re closing
the ecosystem, you need to use the one appthat can open these
specific links”
Like when Google Talk was XMPP until it wasn’t.
(which is already possible, we just can’t afford the luxury to
keep busy working on making it super-duper zero-effort for some
nerds)
I’m not happy being called some nerds as an insult, I’m not
asking for it to be super-duper zero-effort, I only want it to
EVEN BE POSSIBLE, and some of y’all sure are keeping me busy
fielding grief and scolding and having my head bitten off as
punishment for taking my time out describing what happens in
practice when I am trying to use the app.
That was the biggest mindblow when I had a dayjob in 2021. “We…
Wait, we pay people to test the app and say what part of it
doesn’t work?! And they get appreciated and that’s their actual
job and it’s called testers?!? And we have an entire other
department twho can’t code either but their job is to come up
with how the app can be improved or be used more easily and
they’re called designers?! In the FOSS world where I grew up and
have spent all my time since the nineties, people get hated for
that! Devs hate it when someone says that something doesn’t work
or could be made easier or you describe ways you work or what
you’re trying to do. That’s called being an entitled nerd who
only wants luxury. So wow this is an actual job here?!?” and I
felt so sad and I wanted a redo of the past 20 years. Not that I
agree with dev shops or “enerprise” but I felt that this was the
one thing they did get right: Not hating and bullying the people
who were struggling with the app.
And as I’ve said many times; this isn’t out of entitledness or
expectation or demands. If the reply ever is “okay that would be
great but we just can’t right now” that would be 1000000%
understandable and I’d even feel guilty for even bringing it up.
It’s been years since I started this pair of threads and I’ve
been in no hurry. I’ve not been like “aw c’mon when is this
feature coming already!!”. But when the reply is “no you nerd
don’t you understand that it’s good that your messages to each
other don’t get through and that you can’t talk to your friends
and that we’re creating a closed ecosystem and we don’t want
anyone to advocate for normal SMTP email anymore because we have
abandoned email a long time ago”, that’s not so easy to deal with.
God the emotional toll on me (and probably some of y’all too
because I’ve been giving as good as I’ve been getting) this
thread has taken on me is insane. I can’t breathe it feels like.
It hurts so much to have to butt heads about every little thing
frow what started about a thread about “hey it would be neat to
be able to import keys (and here’s why) and maybe get compatible
with WKD (and here’s why)” that now years later is this flamewar
that’s killing me.
And it also hurts to see Delta Chat head down this road. It’s not
all the way at the end of that road yet thankfully but it’s
heading there a lot faster than I had feared. What started as
such a fast and efficient way to do emails where I didn’t have to
click click click open every email individually but could instead
just shoot off replies as quickly as an IRC session is throwing
all that out the window. And I don’t want to go back to the
normal mail app interface. Even Emacs. It’s so tedious to have to
actually “open” the mails. Delta Chat was so breezy, so
delightful. Before it became Error 523 and flamewars.
Link2xt writes:
There is a webxdc app that does it:
There is also a bot that looks up keys on keyserver and WKDs by
email address and sends back vCards:
Yes, this is good; this (+ I through a li’l something to gether
on my own since I didn’t know about those) would solve the number
one problem I’ve had with Delta Chat since day one many many
years ago, importing keys, once the vcard stuff starts working
well.
As it is it, I made a key from one of my friend’s PGP keys (not
the same person with whom I had the chatmail problems) and
imported it. But my replies to him still didn’t become encrypted.
Delta Chat started a new chat with him setting the subject
“Meddelande från Sandra Snan”. I feel so out of place sending a
subject line like that, it’s like wearing a t-shirt with my own
face, I’d never do that. But replies in the existing chat with
him didn’t become encrypted. And his replies to that new
encrypted chat arrived in the other chat unencryptedly actually.
So the vcard experience has been a huge letdown so far. Also not
sure how to change or update a contact if his key changes.