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earthstar-project / application-formats

Community maintained and approved schemas for different kinds of application data.
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
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about format: User display names and avatars #1

Closed sgwilym closed 1 year ago

sgwilym commented 1 year ago

We've had these informally specified for a long time, and it's time to start making them formal.

This PR only specifies how display names and avatars should be formatted on an Earthstar share. Are there other critical fields which belong in the first version of this format? Perhaps it's worth specifying a way to have freeform fields on a profile, as is available on Mastodon profiles?

Ideas and collaboration welcome in this PR!

parnikkapore commented 1 year ago

To elaborate: I think that this depends on whether the spec is meant to be there unmodified for a long time (like an RFC) or meant to be semi-regularly revised and switched out. I'm not in the Earthstar community so I don't know what's the norm here.

For the avatar image file for instance, while I think it does make sense to limit it to 1:1 images (for the GUI designer's benefit), the file size and dimensions limits might be out of touch in the future, say with really HiDPI displays or really good compression. However, they seem OK for something that's only meant to be active for 2-4 years.

sgwilym commented 1 year ago

Thanks @parnikkapore, I've modified the language to be less restrictive but still gesture towards some of the concerns interface builders and users may face.

To elaborate: I think that this depends on whether the spec is meant to be there unmodified for a long time (like an RFC) or meant to be semi-regularly revised and switched out. I'm not in the Earthstar community so I don't know what's the norm here.

I think we will end up with specs which are changed fairly often and which gracefully handle deviations or older versions. Earthstar as a project does not have much experience with this yet.

sgwilym commented 1 year ago

I've added new Status and Biography sections to this spec. I think that is more or less everything I'd like in this first version.