Nice to see a blogpost on the Mastodon blog about implementing a basic ActivityPub server https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/how-to-implement-a-basic-activitypub-server/
(Though technically webfinger isn't needed for activitypub, but it is for mastodon interop!)
@cwebber I'm curious how subscribing between different AP server implementations is going to work UX-wise. Mastodon, Pleroma and peertube all work with the user @ domain webfinger scheme, but what identifiers shall be used for implementations lacking webfinger?
Just search for https://toot.matereal.eu/users/schmittlauch instead of @schmittlauch.
@notclacke @schmittlauch @cwebber to clarify—while URIs are used in a lot of scenarios, including all federation references, for practical reasons mastodon uses webfinger as its source-of-truth for account uniqueness. we also require that other implementations we federate with have it for UX reasons
@nightpool Requiring OStatus for ActivityPub? That is unfortunate.
@dansup @nightpool Well, Webfinger isn't specifically OStatus related, but yeah that's why Mastodon has it.
Evan Prodromou, who I think was responsible for Webfinger in OStatus, was one of the bigger voices pushing back against it appearing in ActivityPub, saying there's no need for it in a modern federated system IIRC from the SocialWG calls
@dansup @nightpool Or rather, was pushing back against it being a *requirement* (not against implementations optionally supporting it)
@dansup @nightpool You could absolutely have a Mastodon-like interface without Webfinger btw... type @, and it brings up a list of possible recipients which might not even be the webfinger addresses but people who match this in their name who are in your "addressbook"... mastodon already does this mostly. If I type "@karen" I can complete @aldeka even though she has a different username. Pump.io clients use this to select the user's id, but link with their display name as the link text
@cwebber @dansup @nightpool It means you need a rich-text editor to be able to mention someone.
@gargron @dansup @nightpool various pump.io clients have dynamic completion of the username but use markdown in composition... rich-text rendering, but not rich-text editors
@gargron @dansup @nightpool I personally hate markdown kind of but that's not relevant to this ;)
@Gargron @cwebber @nightpool Oh, I get it. I wasn't sure what nightpool meant about UX. Thanks for clearing this up!
@gargron @cwebber @dansup yes this is what I was saying about plaintext vs rich text.