Are room presets/behaviors sane?

[gabrc52]

Let's test last minute

Quasi-duplicate of #85

[gabrc52]

First if we ignore spaces:

Private, no e2e

This gives a warning, so E2EE is expected for "privtae chats"

I think group DMs use the trusted private preset

Public:

For now let's ignore rooms in a space but we have confirmed that the default configuration is entirely delegated to the homeserver so we can configure it from the Synapse side

[gabrc52]

Related to #85

[gabrc52]

This could force end-to-end encryption, maybe even with email invites. But it could lead to lost messages? We would need some testing, so that's not a right now thing but a in a week or two thing.

We can customize the power level override specifically.

Bad news

This is all Synapse lets us customize. So uh. Yeah. I think it's fine for launch but pls it's important before launching to more people. It would really suck if people end up with missing messages and ask for help and I will have no way to help them because this can't be changed retroactively.

[gabrc52]

Okay so with testing it did retroactively import messages

Okay so UI-wise

Plus a general "add" button

History visibility does default to "shared"

Which is exactly what we want:

[gabrc52]

Yeah so for rooms not in a space it's fine, which is what we need for now. Even in end-to-end encrypted rooms you can see past messages, which is superior to Signal!

Now let's test spaces:

There's public and private spaces:

For private spaces, a valid and encouraged use is as a folder to categorize your own stuff.

If you select "just me":

It still acts as a normal space, since you have to explicitly "Add new room":

If you select "me and my team-mates":

If you get a public space, it shows this:

If you ask for a public room it forces you to set an alias, which is not true for the rooms created via the wizard above:

Also the wizard marks the rooms as "suggested":

Now the issue is that if you make a room in a space that is either visible to space members only or private the history visibility is set to invited

I think something that is very distinct about Element is that the people section is group chats and the rooms section is for your rooms, and they do insist on that, even in spaces. Since everything is a room in Matrix, it's hard for me to see it now, but I mean it makes sense. Discord has DMs and Slack has DMs, so the people section aims to recreate that, and "rooms" in the GUI mean like, channels.

[gabrc52]

Well, I assume by FPOP people are not gonna create spaces yet, probably just rooms

[gabrc52]

On Android, if you "start chat", "Banana made future room history visible to all room members."

On Android, if you make it for space members only:

"Banana made future room history visible to all room members."

the Element-Android behavior is inconsistent with Element-web

As for private rooms in a space, it's the same thing.

[gabrc52]

iOS:

Group DM: shared

Create new private room: supposedly shared but not in practice

HUH there is not even consistency on whether shared means you can see old end-to-end encrypted messages

In spaces:

HUH encryption is suggested by iOS for PUBLIC rooms

• Space members: visible to all room members
• Private: visiblke to all room members