Coopr8Red Dwarf and Constellation: could we skip the Bridge?
Red Dwarf and Constellation: could we skip the Bridge? #BlueSky, #ATProtocol, #fediverse, #PDS, #Decentralized, #Client, #red #Dwarf, #whey.party
I realize my title has little to do with the post, lol, tired ADHD brain. I did have the thought that if someone were to be ambitious and motivated enough, the Red Dwarf code could be used to build direct access to BlueSky content into a Fediverse client.
But then, I'm always the guy in the corner pining for the good ole' days of Trillian for IM, the one client to reach them all ^_^
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General_EffortI realize my title has little to do with the post
I was going to say. Red dwarf is the name of a ship and Constellation is a class of ship. In any case, you can’t have a proper ship without a bridge.
I was recently playing around with Constellation and - partly as a statement but mostly as a personal challenge - used it to build ATProto notifications support into my ActivityPub enabled web app (writeup here, I’d post from that but I think lemmy.world blocks it since I sent it too many invalid activities or whatever).
I already had the ability to follow someone on atproto by resolving their handle and hitting their PDS directly (without authentication - that’s all public), and I also turned Bridgy Fed on. With Constellation, I was able to (a) find the bridged atproto version of each ActivityPub post I made, and (b) find any likes, replies, or reposts related to each post.
When a Bluesky post hits my inbox and I click on it, my app checks to see if that user is also using Bridgy Fed, and if they are, it shows me their post over ActivityPub instead, so I can like or reply to it.
More broadly, it might be interesting if someone made an app that used a PDS as its primary datastore, but also had ActivityPub S2S support built into it. I know wafrn can do both protocols, but I think in its case it mirrors posts to a separate PDS kind of like you’re describing.
PandaCap is freaking awesome! Pretty much just what I had in mind when I posted previously about a single client to act as inbox for all ActivityPub and RSS/Atom content, only I had imagined it as a browser plugin or full on custom browser so that the content from the inbox would be opened in a client of the user's preference based on post type.
Really awesome project! including DeviantArt etc is really great for the art angle.
The only feature I would miss here vs. other clients is the search function as you mention. I assume that is omitted because it is a lot of work to implement. Have you looked at extending your project with someone else's code for that function? I know sometimes that is more trouble than help, but it would really take the project to that next level of "completely full featured client".
I have looked at wafrn, definitely a cool project and I like that it handles both protocols, but it has some limitations that hold me back from switching to it as my main client. I didn't know it was using a PDS in that way, do you mean it uses a server side PDS to mirror ATProto content or is it PDS per user?
I’m not exactly sure how it works in wafrn - I haven’t looked into it myself - but last I heard, they were using blacksky’s PDS (lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51892713) which I’m guessing means all their users (at least the ones who’ve turned atproto on) get mirrored to that particular PDS.
The search functionality missing from Pandacap is in some ways intentional; I don’t personally like searching for anything in the fediverse or in Bluesky, because I run into a lot of text posts, photos, screenshots or whatever that I don’t have context for and that I haven’t mentally prepared myself to see. But there’s also the technical issue that right now, Pandacap doesn’t index incoming posts in one place; they either go to the inbox, go to notifications, or get ignored. If search were to be implemented, perhaps it could take the form of an external ActivityPub instance that indexes posts, and Pandacap would just hit its API or something.
The other issues with Pandacap are that it’s single-user, and that it’s on the Microsoft stack, so no one can really use it unless they’re willing to sign up for Azure and know their way around it enough to get it deployed. But that keeps overheads down for me compared to running a VPS.
I’ve never tried loading a PeerTube post in Pandacap but I wonder if it would try (and fail) to display the video in an image tag, or if it would just show up as a text post.
Wafrn (tumblr alternative with fediverse and bluesky support) has started using an alternate relay; this means that they depend on none of bluesky's infrastructure to work. - Divisions by zero
Bluesky post by @gabboman.at.app.wafrn.net saying: “Thanks a lot to @rudyfraser.com for hosting the blacksky PDS. After confirmating thatis ok, wafrn now uses blacksky’s relay! In the next update other wafrns may also use the relay”
I actually like the single-user Delft hosted aspect.
As far as the Microsoft stack goes, could it be hosted on a home server running Windows or does it have to be in the cloud on Azure?
I think it could be. Cosmos DB might have to be replaced with a different EF Core provider - not sure which would be most appropriate but I’m sure something would work. Key and image storage could just be done on disk.