commit: fa1c0cce0be551719a86cdde01e365fbe5c840d2
parent 21ec86bb6e449e2cd0a30f797f2f6caad9991f1f
Author: Eyal Sawady <ecs@d2evs.net>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2021 19:47:25 -0400
Add missing status update from December 2019
It didn't make it through the redesign and was missed by my previous
post re-adding patch
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 83 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/Status-update-December-2019.md b/content/blog/Status-update-December-2019.md
@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Status update, December 2019
+tags: ["status update"]
+---
+
+It's December 15th and it still hasn't snowed here. Why did I move to this
+godforsaken den of unholy heat and rain? I think I have chosen a latitude *just*
+southerly enough to deprive me of the climate I yearn for. I take some comfort
+in the knowledge that I'm travelling home to see the family in a couple of
+weeks, and sure enough Colorado has been covered in snow for some time now.
+Anyway, none of this is relevant to my work, which is what you came here for.
+Let's take a look at this past month.
+
+I've started a couple of new projects this month, the first of which I call
+"[himitsu](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/himitsu)". The goal is to build a
+key-value store for secure information like passwords, keys, and so on. The
+design is inspired by Plan 9's factotum, redesigned for Unix systems and
+somewhat broader in scope. One interesting goal of himitsu is the ability for
+programs to establish authenticated connections without ever handling your
+secret information - for example, your email client could ask himitsu to connect
+to an IMAP server, log in with your authentication details, then hand the
+authenticated file descriptor to the mail reader. The key-value store can also
+store things like the IMAP server address & port, your username, and so on,
+meaning your mail reader could work out of the box with zero configuration. Work
+on this project will be slow going, as I have to use extra care to make sure
+that it's secure and correct.
+
+In SourceHut news, I focused mainly on two workstreams: single-sign-on and
+names.sr.ht, the upcoming DNS and domain registration service. The first finally
+fixes the problems with login across *.sr.ht, and now logging in once will log
+you in everywhere. Other issues with internal OAuth keys expiring have been
+fixed alongside these changes, and I've implemented a lot of improvements to
+the billing system as well. All of these should address some inconveniences
+which have been frustrating users for a while now. As for names.sr.ht, let's
+just share another teaser screenshot:
+
+[](https://sr.ht/LLkW.png)
+
+I also received my [PinePhone](https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/) this week, and
+I've been terribly excited to work on it. I've already sent a few patches to
+postmarketOS upstream, and intend to write more, to get sway working well as a
+daily driver phone interface. "Sway Mobile" is now starting to take shape. The
+first of the projects for this is the development of a touch-friendly
+application launcher, which I've dubbed
+"[casa](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/casa)". Other projects I intend to work on
+for Sway Mobile include a new, touch-friendly bar and lock screen, a new
+on-screen keyboard program, and hopefully the development of touch bindings for
+the compositor itself. I'll be writing up my plans in more detail, along with a
+review of the PinePhone itself, in a blog post next week.
+
+In the course of this work, I also made a small library that readers may find
+useful for their own projects:
+[libfdicons](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ddevault/fdicons). It implements the
+FreeDesktop icon specification in a single small C library, which I need for
+Casa. In other Wayland news, I've made some modest progress on the book, and I
+plan on writing more for it soon. I apologise for letting it get somewhat
+sidelined while I focused on other projects. I ended up overhauling the XDG
+chapter somewhat, as I found it pretty weak on a later reading. I intend to
+write about seats (input) next, and will likely move the XDG chapter after the
+seat chapter so things flow better. I've also started a new Wayland compositor,
+[sedna](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sedna), which aims to reach a broader
+audience than Sway can, and I'll be working on this as time permits.
+
+Speaking of Sway, the next release (1.3) has been coming along, slowly but
+surely. We're only blocked by one change now, and with the original author busy
+I've stepped up to offer what time I can implementing the last few changes. Once
+we get that merged, I'll start working on the release process for Sway 1.3.
+Thank you for your patience <img src="/img/heart.png" style="height: 1rem;
+display: inline" />
+
+[aerc 0.3.0](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/refs/0.3.0) was released this
+month, and progress on the next version has been going strong. Improvements to
+aerc have been almost entirely community driven, and I've only stepped in to
+write a few small patches here and there. Thanks to all of the contributors for
+their help! There are already quite a few changes in for 0.4.0, and more are in
+review now, including many bug fixes, more sophisticated email templates,
+contacts autocompletion, bulk email management, and more. All of this is thanks
+to the great community which has grown around it!
+
+That's all the updates I have for you today. I'm still touched by the support
+the community has given me to work on these projects. I could never be this
+productive without your help. Thank you.
