# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
#
# Usage:
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users View list of users and latest twt date.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt View all twts.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri View all mentions for uri.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash View all twts for a conversation subject.
#
# Options:
# uri Filter to show a specific users twts.
# offset Start index for quey.
# limit Count of items to return (going back in time).
#
# twt range = 1 29
# self = https://watcher.sour.is/conv/olijdpa
So, @prologic, having a slash on the nick breaks mentions. Is there a consensus on which characters are allowed on nicks, or just about anything goes? Evidently I am not going to be exchanging that many twts (if anything at all) with someone with a slash on their nick, but it would be nice to either set some "standard", or fix mentions (again?!) to accommodate.
@fastidious yeah the thing is the [original twtxt (legacy) spec](https://twtxt.readthedocs.org) never really specified any standards around what constitutes a valid source.nick. So this is a bit of a source of contention right now, especially with folks like @ew0k/BW -- I'm currently not sure what to do about it as this affects not only yarnd but others clients too. Parsers have to be updated and changed and that's actually a lot more work than just simply one person just adjusting their "advertised" nick to something more reasonable. (Sorry @ew0k/BW)
@fastidious yeah the thing is the [original twtxt (legacy) spec](https://twtxt.readthedocs.org) never really specified any standards around what constitutes a valid source.nick. So this is a bit of a source of contention right now, especially with folks like @ew0k/BW -- I'm currently not sure what to do about it as this affects not only yarnd but others clients too. Parsers have to be updated and changed and that's actually a lot more work than just simply one person just adjusting their "advertised" nick to something more reasonable. (Sorry @ew0k/BW)
My $0.02 worth (cc @lyse and @movq on standards) is we should stick to the already accepted and conventional standard of ^[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$ or equivalent.
My $0.02 worth (cc @lyse and @movq on standards) is we should stick to the already accepted and conventional standard of ^[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*$ or equivalent.
@prologic Yeah, probably. 🤔 Technically, anything that doesn’t end in a space or *a parenthesis* (because that would break the user agent string) would work in plain old twtxt … At the end of the day, it’s not specified. I gravitate towards “letters and digits”, yeah.
@prologic Yeah, probably. 🤔 Technically, anything that doesn’t end in a space or *a parenthesis* (because that would break the user agent string) would work in plain old twtxt … At the end of the day, it’s not specified. I gravitate towards “letters and digits”, yeah.
@prologic Yeah, probably. 🤔 Technically, anything that doesn’t end in a space or *a parenthesis* (because that would break the user agent string) would work in plain old twtxt … At the end of the day, it’s not specified. I gravitate towards “letters and digits”, yeah.
@movq Good! I'm glad it's quite easy to reach consensus on this 👌 Where do we document and formalize this? How many folks do we need to get "buy-in" from? 🤔
@movq Good! I'm glad it's quite easy to reach consensus on this 👌 Where do we document and formalize this? How many folks do we need to get "buy-in" from? 🤔
@prologic @movq Well, my parser just accepts anything except a space and closing angle bracket in a mention's nick, so this sexy nickname would be completely fine: @<äöü:;,.-_?$§=")$(§@fhttps://example.com> It's pronounced "lol".
Not sure, if we really need to standardize anything. But if you truely want to, how about hyphens and underscores? They're pretty common, too. Just think about @off_grid_living. Actually, I don't follow anybody with a hyphen in their nick, but I'm sure, they're out there. @~duriny uses a tidle, I'm fine with that, too. So probably include tildes as well. The twtxt reference implementation also converts nicks to lowercase. Is that a thing we will keep? Also, why is the slash a problem? Because it's a word boundary?
@prologic @movq Well, my parser just accepts anything except a space and closing angle bracket in a mention's nick, so this sexy nickname would be completely fine: @<äöü:;,.-_?$§=")$(§@fhttps://example.com> It's pronounced "lol".
Not sure, if we really need to standardize anything. But if you truely want to, how about hyphens and underscores? They're pretty common, too. Just think about @off_grid_living. Actually, I don't follow anybody with a hyphen in their nick, but I'm sure, they're out there. @~duriny uses a tidle, I'm fine with that, too. So probably include tildes as well. The twtxt reference implementation also converts nicks to lowercase. Is that a thing we will keep? Also, why is the slash a problem? Because it's a word boundary?
@lyse Hmmm you do raise a good point. So if anything:
> except a space and closing angle bracket
So I guess we should update the lextwt parser ?🤔
@lyse Hmmm you do raise a good point. So if anything:
> except a space and closing angle bracket
So I guess we should update the lextwt parser ?🤔
@fastidious Sad to see you got hit as well, but value can't only ever go up, as most of the scammers in the crypto space and Internets "financial gurus" want people to believe.
@thecanine I think you replied in the wrong thread/yarn 😅
@thecanine I think you replied in the wrong thread/yarn 😅
@prologic I must have miss-clicked, sorry about that. As for the topic of nicknames, I definitely think spaces should be allowed (outside of the beginning and end) and numbers should probably be allowed too, if they aren't already. 🤔
@thecanine No worrries 🤗
Gets kind of difficult to support spaces when a space is the token separates 😂
@thecanine No worrries 🤗
Gets kind of difficult to support spaces when a space is the token separates 😂
@prologic Yeah, I get that. If it's impractical, it's not a problem. I just hate when people see my nickname as one word, so being able to change it to either "the canine" or "TheCanine" would be cool and I think there are more people, who would also want the chance to capitalize some letters in their nicknames, so if we get capital letters working, there'll be less need for spaces. 🤔
@thecanine funny that you mention it, as now I know (TIL, duh!). Before I read this I aways read your nick—in my head, and sometimes out loud, because it was fun—as "the can ine". I always thought Ine was the name. Believe it or not, **can** means **dog** in Spanish, to "The dog named Ine" was the actual translation of your nick. 😂
@fastidious If it's interpreted as some dog related pun, than I'm fine with it. That's what I usually do myself, just with changeable display names. 😄
Funny enough the canine used as my mascot has no canonical name, but thanks to an old file naming convention I was using, that made "Jim" a part of a lot of those image names, some started calling him Jim, so that name is the closest to canon. 🙃
@prologic So what's a display name then? The nickname being the username to log in and the newly added display name to be used as the twtxt nick? @thecanine Yeah, including spaces in the nick won't work for technical reasons. The real twtxt mention syntax (not the one yarnd provides as a simpler alternative) is @ < nick _ url > I'm writing it with spaces, to avoid it being interpreted as mention, but they wouldn't be there in real life. However, the underscore _ would be a literal whitespace, so ordinarily space or tab. The whitespace separates the nick from the feed URL. Also see @movq's comment about the problem with that in the User-Agent HTTP request header.
@lyse Of we added support for "Display Name" it would just be abolition free-form Metadata field used for display purposes only.
@lyse Of we added support for "Display Name" it would just be abolition free-form Metadata field used for display purposes only.
@prologic Hmmm, ok. I think you have to elaborate a bit more on that. I'm not sure what the display name will help with. I fear it will cause confusion with the nick and mentions suddenly not working "anymore" as expected by (new) people.
@lyse No you're right, it's a stupid idea and we shouldn't do it for all the reasons @thecanine spelled out 😂
@lyse No you're right, it's a stupid idea and we shouldn't do it for all the reasons @thecanine spelled out 😂