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Comment by motiejus | Hacker News Reader

I have set up synapse myself a few months ago for my personal domain. I am a happy user so, have been bridging my different chat applications through it.

There is one caveat: looks like "agreeing on how to do video" is not a Matrix standard; it's in the UI configuration or "widgets", which means only matrix/element combo is "properly" supported (with caveats).

Has anyone had success running video calls over Matrix without Element? Is there any movement on the protocol side?

Extending to this thread, will non-element applications have reasonable support for watching (video) fosdem?

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Agreeing how to do 1:1 voice and video is very much part of Matrix's spec: it's right here: https://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.6.1#module-voi...

For multiway calls, we currently embed Jitsi as a Widget - but widgets themselves are also (almost) part of the spec - they're MSC1236 (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1236).

Element may be the only client that implements widgets so far, but we expect that to change once MSC1236 finally gets merged into the spec. Meanwhile, "ability to iframe random content into a chatroom" is a pretty useful thing, and solves the whole video conferencing thing fairly nicely.

Finally, in the longer term, we still plan to implement native voice/video conferencing in Matrix as per https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc235... - but for now we'd rather focus on polishing the messaging bits of Matrix.

> Has anyone had success running video calls over Matrix without Element?

fwiw if you use the Jitsi widget, you can share the URL to your Jitsi room with anyone and they do not need Element or Matrix to join.

The whole voice/video thing is a design problem as protocols like Matrix or XMPP are designed for non-realtime communication, while voice/video is very much realtime. You cannot possibly federate a video stream, so Matrix or XMPP can, by design, only supply the routing (i.e. connecting the people who want to participate in a realtime chat) and the participants then need to agree on some server/software combo that provides the actual video conferencing.

The Matrix clients I have tried have "call via audio" and "call with video" buttons available in convenient places.

> fwiw if you use the Jitsi widget, you can share the URL to your Jitsi room with anyone and they do not need Element or Matrix to join.

I would like my grandma to click a green "phone" button and answer my call. I would like my grandma to be able to issue a call for me.

> and the participants then need to agree on some server/software combo that provides the actual video conferencing.

Since the button is in a very convenient place, I would expect the integration to be a bit deeper than "hope the client understands the invite"; it's tricky to make the clients without a spec.

It would have been nicer if this were documented better/more obviously, so we know what to expect if we want video calls to work across different UIs.

> There is one caveat: looks like "agreeing on how to do video" is not a Matrix standard; it's in the UI configuration or "widgets", which means only matrix/element combo is "properly" supported (with caveats).

Sounds like XMPP all over again.

> Sounds like XMPP all over again.

It's different, it's addressed here:

https://matrix.org/faq/#what-is-the-difference-between-matri...

We think of Matrix and XMPP as being quite different; at its core Matrix can be thought of as an eventually consistent global JSON database with an HTTP API and pubsub semantics - whilst XMPP can be thought of as a message passing protocol. You can use them both to build chat systems; you can use them both to build pubsub systems; each comes with different tradeoffs. Matrix has a deliberately extensive 'kitchen sink' baseline of functionality; XMPP has a deliberately minimal baseline set of functionality. If XMPP does what you need it to do, then we're genuinely happy for you! Meanwhile, rather than competing, an XMPP Bridge like Skaverat's xmpptrix beta or jfred's matrix-xmpp-bridge or Matrix.org's own purple-matrix has potential to let both environments coexist and make the most of each other's benefits.

The whole area of XMPP vs Matrix is quite subjective. Rather than fighting over which open interoperable communication standard works the best, we should just collaborate and bridge everything together. The more federation and interoperability the better.

> Sounds like XMPP all over again.

At least XMPP is community-driven.

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