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What do you think about having a custom URI scheme for the fediverse? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Since we are in the fediverse, I think it would be convenient to have a fediverse-wide resolvable fediverse URI scheme, that would look like so:

fediverse://

edit: Found a relevant FEP: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/07d7/fep-07d7.md

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

It's an intriguing idea and might well be in line with the founding principles of the internet.

As I understand it, the URI is supposed to define the type of data you will find at the address, allowing you to use a client dedicated to that type. So: use a Gopher client for gopher:// data, a newsgroup program for nntp:// data, and of course a web browser for http://.

So the issue here would be to define what "fediverse data" actually looks like. This is quickly becoming quite a technical challenge.

Personally I like the idea of standardizing communication paradigms with a protocol, but you do first have to decide what the paradigms are. A few obvious suggestions:

IM, or one-to-one message (holy grail! but then not public, by definition)
many-to-many text message (IRC)
forum post with comments (this thing right here)
one-to-many message (Xitter, Mastodon)

Since the ActivityPub protocol seems to be the de-facto glue to this fediverse thing, maybe that's where to look first.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

it's not really about the type of data, it's more about how you get it. web browsers could open gopher URIs for a long time, it was just a separate access method.

but the thing is, it doesn't really make a difference today, because we've decided that http is some sort of base protocol.

someone decided to try making a custom matrix:// scheme (it's called a scheme btw) for matrix clients and it's just been a nightmare. clients don't know what to do with the url, servers block it, we had to patch it out to get it to properly encrypt messages to our local homeserver. and matrix just uses http on top anyway.

no, i think they should be reserved for protocols that are important enough to be in the <1000 range of ports. like SSH, or Doom multiplayer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Interesting anecdote. Yes I'm aware that the "ht" in http is now basically a historical artifact. It all feels a bit dirty but, as you say, doing things the way the architects intended is probably not worth the effort.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

So http is hypertext transfer protocol. Maybe activity pub transfer protocol could be aptp://