# 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 8
# self = https://watcher.sour.is/conv/rbkm6dq
Not sure which conversation you mean, @eaplmx (it's already quite late here), but here's my take: I think twtxt it's not heavy enough. For a real feed format I would like to have a clear separation between titles and content. And more options for the content. Plaintext and HTML at least. Twtxt is plaintext, but lots of folks (me included) actually use markdown in their yarns. However, the actual format being used is not advertised anywhere. To make things worse, I actually prefer reStructuredText over markdown. For podcasts some enclosure-like thing would be nice as well. Twtxt being line based also really limits structuring of longer content by hand. Just can't produce a nice source file.
On the other hand, RSS and Atom being XML are way too heavy for my taste. And then there's JSON feed. It's been a while since I skimmed over it, can't remember the details, but I wasn't sold on this one either. I also never encountered any JSON feed in the wild. So I'm still on my quest to find an optimal feed format.
@lyse
> Twtxt is plaintext, but lots of folks (me included) actually use markdown in their yarns. However, the actual format being used is not advertised anywhere.
That's a really good point. We should formalize a Markdown flavor as a format extension on https://dev.twtxt.net/.
yarnd appears to use gomarkdown with a few extensions. I'm not sure what else gomarkdown translates by default.
There should definitely be a concrete specification on what syntax should be supported by twtxt clients with "Markdown" support. cc @prologic and @darch
@lyse
> Twtxt is plaintext, but lots of folks (me included) actually use markdown in their yarns. However, the actual format being used is not advertised anywhere.
That's a really good point. We should formalize a Markdown flavor as a format extension on https://dev.twtxt.net/.
yarnd appears to use gomarkdown with a few extensions. I'm not sure what else gomarkdown translates by default.
There should definitely be a concrete specification on what syntax should be supported by twtxt clients with "Markdown" support.
@mckinley We've talked about this once before and in fact even tried to formalize it but in the end we couldn't agree on a way to do it or even if it was a good idea... Worth revisiting this again? Like @lyse I've also looked at JSON Feed and wasn't entirely convinced either.
@mckinley We've talked about this once before and in fact even tried to formalize it but in the end we couldn't agree on a way to do it or even if it was a good idea... Worth revisiting this again? Like @lyse I've also looked at JSON Feed and wasn't entirely convinced either.
@prologic I don't know if a metadata field is strictly necessary. I think there ought to be a defined set of syntax that all clients with Markdown support can be expected to handle in the same way. CommonMark maybe? It looks like Yarn supports most of CommonMark already, though I've never seen a horizontal rule. Let's try it:
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@mckinley So... What are you proposing exactly? 🤔 If not some kind of metadata field declaration?
@mckinley So... What are you proposing exactly? 🤔 If not some kind of metadata field declaration?