Elmdentica

About this program

Elmdentica is a Free Software (and GPLv3 licensed) EFL based client for  StatusNet servers, like the most famous one,  IdentiCa. This program is optimized for physically small touch screens.

Unlike Twitter, StatusNet is a federated µ-blogging tool, and does not impose bad security models like OAuth (check below). Thus, Elmdentica doesn't support OAauth, and will likely not support it unless someone provides a nice patch.

The screen shots below were taken on an OpenMoko Neo Freerunner, probably the most open of smart phones, albeit not the most powerful.

Usage

Main window

This is the main window, (the journalist Glyn Moody is currently selected) where you can see statuses posted by the people in the current timeline and a toolbar of actions just below it. Statuses resemble comic style baloon dialogues pointing to the user's picture, which resides just below the user's name.

At the top right of each status, there's a timestamp, which can be absolute or relative to the current time, at your will, which you can change in the settings dialog.

If you are worried because you don't see any GUI for controlling elmdentica, then stop worrying! This application is oriented towards small touch screens where you'd better use the small physical size for what really matters.

As you press certain areas of the window, GUI will show up for some user actions.

If you tap near the top area, a posting area will show up and then you'll be able to post statuses (which are explained further below, in Posting).

Timelines

If you tap near the bottom area, instead, a toolbar will show up with some more actions (like selecting timelines or accessing the settings dialog).

Pressing the Timelines button will pop up a menu with the supported timelines:

• Direct messages sent to yourself
• Everyone's statuses
• Your statuses
• Favorites status
• Replies or mentions of yourself (like repetitions of your messages)
• You and your friends

When you press on a status, you select it. When you press and hold for about half a second a selected status, action buttons show up with which you can:

• Reply
• Repeat (redent, retweet...)
• DM (send a direct message) to the user who posted the status (more details in Posting, below)
• Mark a status as a favourite one (or unmark as favourite one which previously was a favourite)

Additionally, if the status was sent in reply to another one, it will show up the possibility to load that status just below the current one, just like this:

Posting

When you tap near the top area, an entry and a few buttons show up where you can type your message and send it, turn it into a direct message to someone else or clear the text completely (faster than erasing all characters one by one with your finger).

Status details

If you pressed the status details button, you can access links to related users, groups, tags and links.

As links are sometimes too long, which would distort the bubbles, they are each converted in the status into a mark ([link]) which are accessible through this dialog's Links tab.

Same will go for users related to the status (the poster and those he mentions in it), as well as groups and hash tags.

Issues

Bugs & Feature Requests

• Yes, of course you can suggest  Feature Requests
• Please warn about  bugs as well :)

Blocker priority tickets:

#610

I propose to add support for twitter elmdentica

Critical priority tickets:

#890

spam

OAuth

Also known as enlightenment project bug #610.

The author considers OAuth to be a really badly designed auth protocol because it adds a complex workflow for little gain in client applications. If you don't trust what you run in your device (phone, tablet, PC) you're toast.

In his opinion, OAuth is perhaps a good enough compromise if you want to let web sites (which you normally don't control) to do some limited actions on your behalf, in which case you don't want to let them have your password details, but for applications it's just asking for bugs and then there's worse, it's not properly standardized and so popular sites like Twitter do weird changes that only make things harder.

The author of Elmdentica wrote about it on his blog,  Twitter is Wrong, should not drop https basic auth for client applications as it adds no benefit to anyone.

This doesn't mean Elmdentica won't ever have OAuth support, just that he doesn't feel inclined to support it. It also doesn't mean Twitter won't work at all, just use  SuperTweet and then define a StatusNet? account pointing at Twitter. Most features will work (groups won't, for instance).

If a good patch that adds support comes up, however, he may integrate it, so don't hesitate to hack :)