v0.3.12: now we do Windows
Big news: I finally fixed a long-standing issue, where Publ wouldn’t work on Windows due to how Windows uses a different path separator from every other OS on the planet.
Big news: I finally fixed a long-standing issue, where Publ wouldn’t work on Windows due to how Windows uses a different path separator from every other OS on the planet.
(Okay, to be fair, macOS technically does too; internally it has a path separator of : instead of /. But the POSIX API transparently hides that.)
Anyway, I’ve updated the getting started guide accordingly, and now it shouldn’t be any more inconvenient to build Publ sites from a Windows machine as from Linux or macOS.
Also a few other smol bug fixes, like max_width now works correctly on remote images where width isn’t specified.
I’ve also added a bunch more deployment HOWTOs although they’re in a very rough state right now. As always, I welcome assistance in this regard.
Below the cut, some more thoughts on federated identity.
So, after poking at IndieAuth implementations a bit more, I felt rather dissatisfied with the current ecosystem around it. In particular, all of the implementations seem to be geared towards providing login to one’s own publishing hub and related tools, rather than providing federated identity across an open web. The project goals are also to get everyone off of silos, which is totally fair! but in the meantime, most users are on a silo of some sort, and I really dislike the idea of building a feature where end-users must have a certain level of technical skill to use it.
However! As much as OpenID has seemingly fallen by the wayside, a lot of things still support it. In particular, if you use Dreamwidth, WordPress.com, Launchpad, or a bunch of other things you already have an OpenID provider. If you have a self-hosted website it’s also (relatively) simple to add your own via SimpleID (although to be fair there are similarly-simple IndieAuth providers), and there’s also OpenID providers for self-hosted WordPress. Heck, if you use GMail, you can can use your gmail address with OpenID too!
Given that most of the friends who I want to see friends-only content have at least one of the above options, I am going to focus on OpenID as the primary federated identity mechanism for Publ.
I will of course add IndieAuth at some point! But I don’t feel like it’s quite ready to be the primary means of support just yet. Fortunately, both standards are easy to support at the same time; I have my own site set up (and working) as both an OpenID and IndieAuth provider for myself, for example, and this gives me pretty good coverage. But I want to focus on what gives the best bang for the buck for my own personal site.