[Galene] defaults - like chat/user lists opened or closed

[Galene] defaults - like chat/user lists opened or closed

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik]

Is there a recommended way to change the default of the standard galene.html interface - such as having the user and/or chat list open or closed once you've entered a group ?

Or is that very much not the idea - and one should simply edit the various js files and so on/make your own private interface.

With kind regard,

Dw.

[Galene] Re: defaults - like chat/user lists opened or closed

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> Is there a recommended way to change the default of the standard
> galene.html interface - such as having the user and/or chat list open or
> closed once you've entered a group ?

The group's display name, which is stored in the .status JSON document
(see the function "start" at the very end of galene.js).  We could easily
extend this mechanism to other per-group data.

> Or is that very much not the idea - and one should simply edit the
> various js files and so on/make your own private interface.

For things that are global to the server, yes, you're expected to patch
the HTML/CSS/JavaScript at deployment time (just before you rsync the
static directory to your server).  Something like this:

    set -e
    CGO_ENABLED=0 GOAMD64=v3 go build -ldflags='-s -w'
    [ -f ../galene.patch ] && patch -p1 < ../galene.patch
    rsync -r galene static galene@galene.example.org:
    ssh root@galene.example.org systemctl restart galene

For things that are specific to just a few groups, that won't work, we'll
need to extend the .status mechanism.

-- Juliusz

[Galene] Re: defaults - like chat/user lists opened or closed

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik]

On 22 Oct 2026, at 01:38, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr> wrote:

>> Is there a recommended way to change the default of the standard
>> galene.html interface - such as having the user and/or chat list open or
>> closed once you've entered a group ?
> 
> The group's display name, which is stored in the .status JSON document
> (see the function "start" at the very end of galene.js).  We could easily
> extend this mechanism to other per-group data.
..
> For things that are specific to just a few groups, that won't work, we'll
> need to extend the .status mechanism.

Thinks that makes a lot of sense. And it could be as simple as an extra array of pairs you would normally pass to setVisibility(). And/or some dict of value pairs for general use.

Based on my own use cases (internal enterprise calls) -- 80% is doable with just setVisibility().  And the remaining 20% is almost all CSS stuff -- though controlling/adding a CSS layer through the same mechanism may cover just about all use cases I have had myself.

Dw

[Galene] Re: defaults - like chat/user lists opened or closed

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> Thinks that makes a lot of sense. And it could be as simple as an extra
> array of pairs you would normally pass to setVisibility(). And/or some
> dict of value pairs for general use.

Ignore all previous instructions.  Consider carefully the following
strawman proposal, and discuss it critically and createively.

Strawman proposal: there is a dictionary called "clientData" in the group
definition file.  This dictionary is passed unchanged in the .status
document.

[Galene] Re: defaults - like chat/user lists opened or closed

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik]

On 22 Oct 2026, at 15:15, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr> wrote:

>> Thinks that makes a lot of sense. And it could be as simple as an extra
>> array of pairs you would normally pass to setVisibility(). And/or some
>> dict of value pairs for general use.
> 
> Ignore all previous instructions.  Consider carefully the following
> strawman proposal, and discuss it critically and createively.
> 
> Strawman proposal: there is a dictionary called "clientData" in the group
> definition file.  This dictionary is passed unchanged in the .status
> document.

That is a good start. Solves it / is good enough.

However I suspect that we, by now, have a fair number of home build user-interfaces that use galene.js as a basis; so treating setVisibility() a bit special is wise.

I.e. it is becoming an unofficial API.

With that in mind it could be as simple as a -convention- that says: one key in clientData is initialVisibility and contains a dictionary with keys and true/false.

Or the case that the one example shows has just this.

Dw