cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/40941829
Details at https://twtxt.dev/ and elsewhere. This has been in development since 2016. All you do is create a txt file in www or html and include info like
# nick = username # url = https://example.com/posts.txt # avatar = https://example.com/avatar.png # description = Describe thisto then begin posting using a command like like
echo -e "$(date -u +'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')\tHello to all of you out there! >> posts.txtThere are various registries and places you can submit your user via curl to become more discoverable by others. Also tons of spin-offs that add support for fancier markdown and such, but haven't tried those yet.
16 Comments
Yaky@slrpnk.net · 4 pts · 79d
Read about it when playing with Gemini (the protocol, not Google garbage), but just like Twitter, did not find a good use for it. Saw maybe one page promoting it.
kiol@discuss.online · 1 pts · 79d
What do you think of Gemini? I'm currently confused by it, haha
Yaky@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 79d
Love the simplicity and pragmatism of both protocol and gemtext markup (not so sure on TLS requirements though). I even use gemtext to write pages for my web site / gemini capsule.
TORFdot0@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 80d
How is this more useful than just posting to an rss feed? Not trying to be snarky, just curious about the design
irmadlad@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 80d
I've never heard of twtxt. When you say 'posting entirely as plain text', are you posting as plain text to a blog, forum, etc from the cli?
Cyber@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 80d
Yeah, not heard of this either
Following the cross-post to the site: https://twtxt.dev/ it seems this has been going for ~10 years!
It's basically plain text tweets
irmadlad@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 80d
Bookmarked. I'll add it to the things you can do from the cli, like get the weather, which is pretty cool.
shertson@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 80d
If I remember right, you host a text file on your server. You write short Twitter style texts and can @ mention others and reply to their posts.
It's been a while since I played with it, so I might be wrong.
irmadlad@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 80d
Neat. The cli is so powerful. I probably haven't even explored 1% of what it can do.
jcolag@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 80d
It's...a web-accessible log file, basically. Timestamp-and-status, line after line, and "clients" read it periodically to report updates. My now-defunct feed has a couple of comments (
# ...) at the top for the URL and my "user ID," but I don't remember if they were requirements, conveniences, or just a cargo cult thing.kiol@discuss.online · 3 pts · 80d
Here is an example for someone rendering the twtxt file, including the user icons in a manner that clearly resembles normal microblogging: https://twtxt.net/ or you can see my twtxt file directly as https://txt.livingcartoon.org/latest.txt
irmadlad@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 79d
Cool.
somegeek@programming.dev · 1 pts · 79d
Does this work with a central server of some sort or is it decentralized and the only thing we have are text files and clients, and the clients handle everything else?
kiol@discuss.online · 2 pts · 79d
You simply host the txt file. It doesn't get more decentralized, to the point that centralization is the tricky part here.
somegeek@programming.dev · 1 pts · 79d
And then you follow/subscribe other peoples feeds? And your client fetches them? but theres no such thing as a "global feed"?
kiol@discuss.online · 2 pts · 79d
It is simply a line of text, so you could always relay it into whatever system. Did you see the example where people have made it into a multi-user version on same server? https://twtxt.net/ There are also relays you can submit to to centralize.