farooqkz

#chooj #matrix #matrixorg #chat #chatapp #chatclient #foss #kaios

After a long period of no progress, I've got time to work on chooj, the Matrix client for KaiOS, again! The progress is slow and constant funding is needed so that project will reach stable status within a reasonable period.

What's new?

From user point of view

Because many security flaws were found in one of dependency libraries of chooj, matrix-js-sdk, I had to tell everyone to stop using chooj. The most important change is that with upgrade of this dependency, chooj is usable again.

There are many small features which have been added. Most importantly, there is a much better and more friendly login progress, you can save pictures to gallery, log out from chooj(In past the only option was uninstalling chooj and logging out from another client), and join rooms by entering room's alias(name) or id . Many bugs have been fixed and probably many new ones have been introduced. Finally, I've added partial support for checking presence of your contacts. Please check if this feature works with your homeserver. For my homeserver, all contacts show as offline(gray badge next to the user avatar).

From developer point of view

All dependencies have been upgraded to latest versions. This include Inferno, the JS SDK, localforage and many others.

I've also switched from webpack to parceljs. The app was initially created with Create Inferno App which used webpack. But during upgrading dependencies(which also required upgrading node), I've found webpack has too much overhead with its configuration. While when targeting KaiOS, zero configuration truly doesn't exist, parcel requires way less effort for this. Also parcel uses Rust which makes building much faster.

There are working development and production builds. But more work must be done. For instance, when targeting Firefox 48, parcel tries to build a bundle which is good for both the ancient FF48 and newer browsers. FF48 doesn't support Javascript modules while modern browsers support. So parcel builds both module and nomodule Javascripts which make the bundle size twice. You can see this issue in parcel's repo for tracking the progress of it.

Regarding the UI library, chooj was using AdrianMachado's KaiUI which is both ancient and intended to be a React UI library. React on KaiOS is really a terrible idea because of its efficiency. chooj, however, was using just styling stuff from the KaiUI. But the dependencies which were supposed to be used in a React project, was also installed with yarn install.

As a long term solution, we need to fork this KaiUI and maintain it ourselves because Adrian is no longer working on it. For now I've forked it to KaiUIv2 where all React stuff have been removed and now that is dependency of chooj. The styling stuff, however, is untouched. Many works must be done. I invite users of this KaiUI to help me with maintaining KaiUIv2.

Future plans

I plan to keep the look and feel of chooj as is till I release the first version(which will be 0.0.0). The 0.0.0 release will have very basic functionalities of a chat app including basic chatting, joining rooms both through public directories and by name, inviting users to DM, managing invites, experimental push notification support and perhaps voice call or end to end encryption support.

After that, huge changes must be made. You can see a proposed UI design in this issue. And so many internal changes like separating the KaiUI Inferno components from chooj should also be done.

KaiOS 3.x support

There is no KaiOS 3.x support at the time of writing this post simply because there is no KaiOS 3.x global device which is also debug enabled. Many phones have been released which are US-only. There is Nokia 2780 which is US-only but not carrier locked. But community member who have bought this device are spending their time on finding a way to enable debug mode on this device.

Funding and help needed

Constant funding is needed for the project in the long term:

• Push gateway server is required for receiving push notifications. The server software should be written in Rust(or possibly Go if someone else wanted to take the job) which relays the notifications from user's homeserver to user's device. The server cost will vary depending on the number of users of chooj. If the number of users are big enough, we could have more than one server for different regions.

• Funding is also needed for development of chooj and its push gateway software. While I try to not abandon chooj, but I need an income for my life.

• chooj must be tested on different KaiOS versions and phones with different hardware features. For instance, the video call feature will require a phone with a front/selfie camera. While it is possible that I do this part of development remotely(e.g. tell someone else to test), it will be very painful and slow.

To help with funding, I've put a Bitcoin Cash(not Bitcoin) address in the project's README. If you are not already familiar with cryptocurrency stuff, you can buy from Paypal or an exchange like which I've mentioned in the link above. And then sending to my address.

There are many other stuff which money will not solve like testing. There is no machine which I can feed it money and after that it will tell me bugs of this project. Also I am a developer and not a UI/UX designer. So help and feedback from the community is necessary just like funding.