Wow! After a really tough week work-wise, what a great day to start the weekend.

Finished a major milestone on #Cicero / #Ginlo_II. Only two big work-packages left, all the others are minor topics. And this milestone was really huge with so many great enhancements.

But more importantly, after finishing work, I went to my #HappyPlace #PeraMeze - again.

But this time I was joined by two wonderful 15-year olds. One of them ("J") is a child of a very good friend of us and the other one ("F") is their closest friend.

I know "J" since their 2nd birthday so we know and like each other a lot. I had never met "F" before thus that was a bit of a question-mark.

Today was their last day at our place in Munich. Tomorrow morning they are both traveling back. In the meantime, I got to know "F" better and we realized we did like each other. She also isn't as shy as on the first day with us anymore.

Assuming they had a great time here and hoping to top it off with a nice dinner I invited them to my Happy Place for dinner (unfortunately, #LoveOfMyLife was/is still a bit sick, so she could not join us).

What a wonderful evening we three had: at one point at Pera "F" and "J' start laughing out loud. So, I asked what's up...
F: "I think the girl working here is really beautiful! But 'J' says I can't say someone is beautiful when they are a girl."
Me: "Why, J?"
J: "I didn't say that. Of course you can say they are beautiful, regardless of whether they are a girl or a boy!"
Me: "???"
F: "Well, I think - umm, - you know, I am bi, so that's maybe why J says so."
Me: "???"
F: "Oh, I am bi, you know, imdat, LGBTQ...?"
Me: "..."
F: (a bit hesitant now)"Well, you know, LGBTQ-parade? Yeah, I am, 'B'..."
Me: "You DO know WHAT I am, right? J? Didn't your Mom tell you?"
J: "What?"
(me takes out iphone, searches for definition of non-binary, shows them)
J: "Oh, yeah. Mom told me, yes. No problem, no worries..." (turns to F): "Yeah, imdat is non-binary" (hands over my phone to F; F starts reading, eyes get bigger and bigger - 😳😳😳)
F: "..."
... 😂😂😂 ...
Then the evening turned to an amazing, wonderful, gorgeous, awesome dinner + walk at the #Isar + sit at the Isar + dance to some music at the Isar + talk about difference between bi- and pansexuality especially wrt to cis and trans, about trixic, enbian, ...

"F" was so amazed to meet an "older trans non-binary", they completely opened up - to me and to "J" - and we three became probably friends forever: two 15-year old cis + 54-year old trans non-binary person (in case of "J", nobody really knows whether *they* are cis, trans, cis-bi, cis-pan, cis-...; I think not even they themselves know that yet, but atm, they seem to insist on being cis-het, though all the signs show otherwise...)

You probably guessed it: both are, according to them, cis female...

I don't think this was the last time they came to Munich😍

#trans #beauty #lgbtqia #lgbt #lgbtqi

Oh, not to forget: I was then farewelled by one of my beloved friends (I call them friend now because we exchanged enough history to call each other friend) working at Pera with the words: "Come here you spirit of my soul" and a huge, huge hug...🥹

Yay! 1,000 commits.

#Ginlo #Ginlo_II #Cicero #Flutter

I haven’t mentioned much wrt #Ginlo_II / #Cicero lately. That is because there was so much going on with it, that I really either didn’t have time or was so exhausted I could not talk about it.

But now, we are back at it again … it seems video is so foreign to computers that each operating system has its own preferred video format, with Windows having any one of the formats you can imagine *without* having any built-in libraries that a dev could just use - yeah, like: “Oh, we support all of them - but you have to write your own code!”

So, I have added video playback support to Ginlo II for #Windows (and possibly #Linux), but that broke it for #macOS - so, I had to help someone on #GitHub to fix their package / get it running for macOS as well. Now, it works nicely.

Anyway… writing an app for five platforms at the same time is kind of challenging - nicely challenging, but still challenging; but we are getting there. Today I started implementing drag & drop, multi-device support, backup & restore and various other major features. Everything is looking very much on-schedule (my schedule that is) and I am really looking forward to starting the tests on the production environment very soon.

#Flutter #iOS #Android #WorkTopics

I wish I could talk more about upcoming super-cool features, but the marketing, rightfully, kindly asked not to disclose any more new features please, so… y’all have to wait and see 🤷😂

So, I am taking tomorrow and Monday off.
This weeks result:
- Commits: 60 on #Cicero / #Ginlo_II and probably around 10 on third-party packages
- Tickets closed: 28
- Tickets in progress: None
- Tickets todo: 23
- Remaining other tickets: 24

Of the remaining 24 tickets five are just ideas, four are not mine, about 10 are “For Future”.

But in the “23 todo”, there are some major tickets such as “Multi-Device Support”, “Share Extension for iOS”, “Backup/Restore”, and a few other larger items.

But still, things are finally shaping up again.
#WorkTopics #Cicero #Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

BTW: Thank you to all you wonderful, lovely, supportive, warm, kind and beautiful people for helping me get through the last 24 hours. It really **did** help a lot - all your hugs, supportive messages, cuddles - even if “only” virtually! Thank you 🙏

Today’s result:
- Commits: 26
- Close tickets: 4 (including “Video playback on Windows”)
- Todo: 3
- Open: 22

The problem is now that I can play video in Cicero Windows but with that I have killed video on macOS. In order to get it working on macOS again, I need to fork and fix a few issues in the repo/package I used from someone else.

#WorkTopics #Cicero #Ginlo_II #Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

Today seems a bit less, but in fact, these were larger tickets. Especially the one for security/privacy (“Set Pin/Lock Screen”) was a bit larger, because that included also “biometric authentication” on iOS & Android (FaceID/Face recognition and TouchID/Fingerprint) - if the user wants it so…

The result:
- Tickets done: 6
- Commits: 6
- In Progress: 4
- To do: 22 (probably 20, because two of them should be done by the six tickets done today)

#WorkTopics #Cicero #Ginlo_II #Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

Also, I still don’t really know why Video Playback on macOS works - I am serious here: I really, really don’t know why it works because there is supposed to be no code for video playback on macOS (Flutter-package `video_player` doesn’t include any macOS-Code at all, but it still works …) 🤔🤷

What a lazy Sunday: coffee, breakfast at 12:30, watched “Castle in the Sky” (#GhibliStudios), watched the first three episodes of #Extrapolations, and did some work on #Cicero / #Ginlo_II (because I was bored). All in all, a lazy Sunday.

Now I must go to bed, I am tired. #Mimi / #CatWoman was extremely tiresome last night as she woke me up at least four or five times, so now off to bed.

With that, good night my lovely #NewFriends and beloved #OldFriends of #Fediverse. Sleep well and dream a little dream of sugarplums and … robot gardeners being the best friends of birds, flowers, trees; trees protecting humans; and humans hopefully one day learning that they are part of nature and destroying nature/environment is just destroying themselves.

Love y’all!

#GoodNightFediverse

Not really much to say today, except that it was a successful day wrt #Ginlo_II / #Cicero. Added some major enhancements and finally passed the 0.8.x. The next internal release will be 0.9.0, starting next week.

Also, with my other client: the dev team is really doing a great job there and I am limiting myself to only doing MR /code reviews and overall architectural guidance. The other devs are having fun and doing a fantastic job - and I believe that atm they actually enjoy me just doing code reviews for their code. So, all in all, we’re good there as well.

So, and with that I bid you good night, my wonderful #NewFriends and lovely #OldFriends of #Fediverse. Sleep well and dream a little dream of sugarplums and … a summer breeze caressing you cheeks with a hint of salt-water from a beautiful clear ocean, a few birds calling for their partners, and some thunder in the far, far, far distance; you can see a beautiful summer rain is coming with thunders and lightnings, lasting only about half an hour to be replaced by the bright, warm, shining sun again.

#GoodNightFediverse

I haven’t been posting #WorkTopics for a while - not because I wasn’t working but rather because there was too much to do.

At the moment, I am at v0.8.5 of #Ginlo_II/#Cicero. I am picking up tickets left and right and cleaning up all the small but important tasks.

We already have a working iOS, Android, macOS and Windows-version of the client and it looks awesome. I will tackle the Linux version probably some time in fall, as that is a little low prio for the moment.

But apart from that, I am very happy with the progress.

What is left (big items):
- Backup/Restore
- Add new device to a Cicero-client (I can current add Cicero as a new device to #Ginlo classic, but I can’t use Cicero as source-device to add a new device)
- Share-Extension for iOS
- Sync contact list across devices - this is a bit complicated because we value privacy very highly. Thus, the syncing of contacts across devices must be done in a way that we, the service operators, don’t see any unencrypted data at all. So, some work to do there.

There are other technical topics, but I am mostly getting there. I also communicated the first beta-release date-range in the company, so I am quite confident. Let’s see…

#Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

A weird week finally ends with a not too bad Friday: #Ginlo_II/#Cicero is doing well. I am slowly preparing release 1.0.0, which needs to have support for all possible configurations that may come in the future. So, this version already respects settings for which there is no UI/UX, i.e., if that setting has a value (for whatever reason), Cicero will respect it.

This makes it possible to introduce new features without every user having to upgrade/update their client to have at least read-only (or: “respect-only”) for those features.

And on top, I have finally managed to have v0.8.3 (Internal) released to the team. Next are 0.8.4, 0.8.5 and then off to 0.9.0. So, 1.0.0 is really not that far anymore.

And on the other front (other client), things are coming along really, really well. More details on that next week.

With that, I wish my cherished #NewFriends and my adored #OldFriends a good night, sleep well and dream a little dream of sugarplums and… days of future past, when yesterday today was tomorrow and tomorrow today will be yesterday (Yesterday… all my troubles seemed so far away… 🎶)

#GoodNightFediverse

Well, at least today we had two successes:
- Color-refreshed curls
- #Ginlo_II / #Cicero first real nice version that I am happy with

On the latter: there are so many nice features in it now that I am getting more and more excited about the release later this year. Amazing features nowhere to be found (I was kindly asked not to broadcast too many of those sexy, new features as, rightfully, marketing would like to have *some* secrets for launch 🤗)

Regardless: I am really happy that Cicero is going in the right direction - now, I just have to figure out why it increases the badge-counter by 2 instead of 1 when a new message arrives - but hey, this one is probably very easy to fix.

Also, there is this issue that the app is not launched when it was quit even though a new push notification arrived on iOS - I’ll need to check that tomorrow - I have a hunch that it has something to do with the time of day.

Aaaaanyway, long story short: good day, not great, but good. With that, my lovely #NewFriends and always beloved #OldFriends of #Fediverse, I bid you a good night and hope you dream a little dream of sugarplums and … curls, curls, and lovely people everywhere, fighting for the equal rights for everyone.

#GoodNightFediverse

I didn’t write anything about work today, did I?

Well, basically this and next week I am trying to prepare #Ginlo_II / #Cicero towards MS 0.9.0 - the idea with MS 0.9.0 is that once reached, I will have only two really major items left:
- Multi-Device (Coupling + Syncing)
- Contact-Handling: sync, update, delete, etc.

Once I am ready to tackle 0.9.0, we will be zeroing in towards our target date for internal testing. Currently, it is mainly “internal fun”, i.e. not really testing because it is not feature-complete, but rather having fun watching Cicero grow.

So, I added some interesting features last few days:
- Really nice message pin/unpin in the chat
- Set message permissions: prevent copy, prevent share, prevent forward
- Respect those message permissions
- Show message permissions, including a “lock” on bubbles showing that permissions are limited
- Slideshow for images, including caption-text (“alt text”)
- Respect all the settings, including for notifications
- Better group invitation display
- Better chat invitation display
- Better context-menu for messages
- Vanishing message (self-destructing)
- Privacy: hide my name, hide my profile image, hide my status - generally or chat-by-chat
- Rotate my profile key (together with “block user” a really nice protection against stalkers)
- Starred messages
- Prepared DB for future features
- PUSH: it is awesome how reliable it works
- PUSH (iOS/macOS): sound in general and chat-by-chat
- and so much more… and it is so fast, I mean, the client is really unbelievably fast (though with lots of bugs 😏)

Now, Cicero is not yet ready for mainstream use but I guess, in about four weeks, it should start replacing my existing Ginlo client as my day-to-day client. let’s see

Check out @ginlo - the official account of the service.

#Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully) #Messenger #Secure #Privacy

What are my biggest annoyances with messengers such as WhatsApp, Signal, or even Telegram?

- They are either secure (Signal) and then they don’t really care much about user experience, privacy, and protection of users, OR
- They have horrible UX such as WhatsApp where there is still no Tablet- or Desktop-Client available, OR
- They are comfortable to use, but they don’t really care about the security and privacy of their users such as Telegram, OR
- They are really nice, have great UI/UX, consider security well and privacy somewhat, but then are available single platform only such as Apple Messages.

There are so many annoyances, including the privacy issue, that I decided to take the best out of all of them and add all the missing UI/UX, privacy and protection I could think of and make a great messenger.

This is #Ginlo_II / #Cicero, coming soon.

- It has E2E-encryption AND encryption for data-at-rest (local).
- It has privacy-by-design built-in, i.e. if you don’t want your chat-partner to know who you are, then they won’t.
- It has over-the-shoulder protection of chat partners.
- It has stalker-protection.
- It has trigger-warning protection.
- A new chat always starts as invitation which you can deny AND/OR block the user.
- You can NEVER be added to a group WITHOUT your agreement; instead you will get an invitation, which you can reject (and block the user).
- You can define who can contact you at all.
- You can define who can send you any group invitations at all.
- You can define that a message you send can neither be copied, nor forwarded, nor exported (attachments).
- You can send vanishing messages.
- You can define that a chat only has vanishing messages - for a certain time - and then continue normal.
- You can …

See, there is so much to a messenger than just sending messages around.

Cicero / Ginlo_II will be the first messenger which is by design a safe environment.

And because you can configure so much, I will add a setup-assistant (if you want) where you can choose between “Standard”, “Safe”, and “Ultra Safe” (or so), with sensible defaults for all settings for each.

And no, we at the company don’t want to know anything about you at all, really. We just want you to have a safe, secure and privacy protecting environment for your messaging needs - free of charge (we make money with the business version).

Above all, the client is user friendly - i.e. user-first, or rather: UX first - for #iOS, #Android, #macOS, #Windows and (hopefully) #Linux, all written in #Flutter

Stay tuned, … later this year.

Today I added a nice feature to #Ginlo_II / #Cicero: Pin/Unpin messages in a chat

My initial idea was to allow only up to four (which looks nice on phones) to be pinned. But then I started using it on my iPad in the evening and realized that the way it is done is actually quite nice and why should it be limited to only four? I mean if someone wants to pin ALL of their messages in a chat, then be it, right?

Ok, then I continued looking at the chat and realized that it could be a nice idea to show/hide the list of pinned items at the top, so…

Argghh… the result is the ticket on second image attached.

I should never check in the evening what I have done during the day 😂

#Fluttert #iOS

Today’s #WorkTopics can only be called “EPIC” … the list is really too long to put in here, but I hope I can finish most of them today, otherwise tomorrow.

It is Milestone 0.8.3 (sounds small, eh?)

#Ginlo #Ginlo_II #Cicero #Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

So, this was really a successful day. I have finished all of the above, plus:
- Caption on the attachments (“Alt Text” for images, videos, all attachments except audio)
- Show/hide caption while previewing attachment

And on top, some absolutely amazing features:
- Disable “Copy” on messages you send
- Disable “Forward”
- Disable “Share” (export) of attachments
- Anonymous chat (i.e. the other side doesn’t ever see your name/image, just your #Ginlo ID)

MAJOR:
Rotate Profile Key: this is a feature I invented for #Cicero. In Ginlo your profile information (i.e. “name”, “profile image”, “online status”, “status message”) is encrypted with a “profile-key”. The profile-key is an AES256-key. Normally, when you start chatting with someone, that profile key is sent by your client to the recipient encrypted using their public key.

The moment you send them a message, they can then retrieve the your profile INFO from the Ginlo server, decrypt it and then see your name, your profile image and your status message.

But, here is the thing: your client has to send it to them in the chat message.

Now, if you select to “Rotate Profile Key”, *your* client generates a new profile key for you, encrypts your profile information with the new key and stores it on the server.

Then your client sends a “profile updated” notification to ALL OF your contacts so that *their* client retrieves your newest profile info.

But, since your contacts don’t yet have your new profile key, they can’t decrypt the new info and thus, you appear anonymous to them.

Now you can to your chats and send each of the contacts whom you want to have your profile-key a message (as long as that chat is not set to “anonymous”) and then they will have the new key.

The best way to use this feature is, obviously, to block users who are annoying you and then rotate your profile key. Since the blocked users will never get any message from you UNTIL you unblock them, any info they have about you from Ginlo servers is now destroyed.

This is a nice stalker-protection. And since you can set privacy on each chat separately (if you want), you have fully granular control over your own privacy…

#Ginlo_II #Flutter #iOS #Privacy #GDPR #Encryption #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

Let’s see if we can:
- finish Push Notifications (everything fine except when I install the app from Testflight)
- fix some of the features that I had added but forgot to activate

#WorkTopics #Ginlo #Ginlo_II #Cicero #Flutter #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

Today, I will (hopefully) be finishing the whole Push Notification issue. We found out so many things about the legacy system by trying to implement push in the new clients, it is unbelievable…

There is so much history, so many things were done that are completely obsolete nowadays, it is amazing…

In the new client, you can set chat-specific notification sounds (so far it works on everything except Android), which were not available in the old clients. Since the server actually used to send the sound-name in the PN, we need to change many things in the server.

Also, the server actually used to tell the client what kind of message the PN was about: Group Invite, Private, Internal, Channel… The new client doesn’t care and doesn’t **need** to care. It seems it was their way to tell which message was higher priority…

For example, group invites were always shown regardless of the user’s setting wrt to “Do not disturb me”… Even if the sender was muted…

Aaaaanyway, lots of fun…

#Flutter #Cicero #Ginlo #Ginlo_II #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully) #APNS #Firebase

Ooof, this was a successful but tough day.

Added support for mute/unmute chats & groups, though I don’t know why the server is still sending PNs even though I said I don’t want any. But maybe that is a bug that was in there since the beginning when they introduces PNs back in 201?

Regardless, I should also just silently receive and process the PNs and not show any notification. Will do that tomorrow.

Also, I should also check the mute end-date on the client side as well, i.e. not only check whether a mute-duration was set but also if that has passed.

Aaaanyway, also added block/unblock on the new go-lang server to block and unblock any user.

Lastly, moved everything to OutgoingMessageManager so that the user can do nearly everything even when they are offline. The actions are then stored in the OutgoingMessageManager and will be sent at next opportunity when device is online again. So far, this was reserved only to various message types, but not all of them.

Now, all messages, including control-messages (join group, leave group, delete group, mute/unmute, block/unblock, and all the others) are first put into the DB and then pushed to the server whenever there is connectivity.

I also now added support for respecting the user’s settings wrt automatic attachment download.

So, all in all, a great day.

#WorkTopics #Cicero #Ginlo #Ginlo_II #Flutter #Android #iOS #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)

Since the huge ticket (Push Notifications) is done, I can concentrate on more mundane things:

- Mute/unmute 1:1 chats
- Mute/unmute Group Chats
- Starred Messages
- (Legacy) Status message
- “isWriting” / “isOnline”

#WorkTopics #Flutter #Ginlo #Cicero #Ginlo_II #iOS #Android #macOS #Windows #Linux (hopefully)