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MSC2785: Event notification attributes and actions #2785

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@richvdh richvdh commented Sep 20, 2020

@richvdh richvdh added proposal A matrix spec change proposal proposal-in-review labels Sep 20, 2020
@richvdh richvdh force-pushed the rav/proposals/notification_attributes branch from 49ed950 to affed03 Compare September 20, 2020 21:22
@turt2live turt2live added the kind:core MSC which is critical to the protocol's success label Sep 20, 2020
follows.

Any event with no `body` property, or an empty `body` property, or a `body` property
which is not a string, should *not* match.
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Should state events be skipped as well?

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I don't think so. It's entirely valid for a state event to contain a keyword.

Implementations should determine whether to set this attribute as follows.

Any event with no `body` property, or an empty `body` property, or a `body` property
which is not a string, should *not* match.
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Ditto on state events.


#### `m.msg`

Any event with a `body` attribute which is a non-empty string.
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Ditto on state events.

Comment on lines +197 to +199
#### `m.voip_call`

An `m.call.invite` non-state event.
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I think we want this to catch VoIP widgets being added too, i.e BBB & Jitsi

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Probably. One of the points of this exercise is to make it easier to change the rules about "what counts as an event of type X", so it's not absolutely critical we get this right from the get-go.

I'll leave the text as-is for now: it's the sort of thing we're likely to end up wanting to fine-tune during development.

Comment on lines 354 to 355
Firstly, clients must decrypt events before assigning notification
attributes. They can then proceed as normal with the rest of the algorithm.
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Could/should clients rely on server-assigned attributes for things like m.dm, m.invite and m.room_upgrade which the server can evaluate even for encrypted rooms.

  • m.keyword
  • m.mention
  • m.voip_call
  • m.msg

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well yes, but we don't (currently) specify a mechanism by which the server tells the client which attributes it assigned. So even if the server does figure out, the client needs to do it again.

I've added some text to say that clients might be able to skip decryption.

Comment on lines +238 to +240
This action also causes the event to be returned via future calls to the
[`/notifications`](https://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.6.1#get-matrix-client-r0-notifications)
API endpoint.
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How does this work with changing profiles.
If I change to profile none does /notifications empty out or does it show the messages which at the time of their sending caused the active profile to trigger m.notify

(do profile changes apply retroactively or not)

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That's a very good question.

I've tried to descope /notifications here as far as I can, because it is a whole can of worms in its own right. If we extend from the current pushrules-based behaviour, then changes do not apply retroactively. My inclination is to stick with this behaviour for now, and save "improvements to the notifications panel" for a future iteration.

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richvdh commented Oct 2, 2020

@auscompgeek @t3chguy tyvm for the helpful reviews. I've added some clarifications in the doc and comments above.

Any event with no `body` property, or an empty `body` property, or a `body` property
which is not a string, should *not* match.

Otherwise, the `body` of the event is inspected for whole-word matches. The
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I would like to only be mentioned by https://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.6.1#user-room-and-group-mentions style mentions

It doesn’t look like this MSC has an option for that.

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yeah, I have deliberately descoped "what actually counts as a mention" here, since it's a hornet's nest. The intention is that in future it'll be much easier to change the rules by changing what counts as an m.mention than it will at present by trying to fit it into push rules.

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1549 concerns fixing mentions.

`m.notifications_profile` event does not exist, then no actions are triggered.

An `m.notifications_profile.<profile>` event can also be set at the room level,
using the same structure. This gives overrides specific to that room. If an
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If spaces are a thing by the time this work gets done, we should also remember that it would be useful to control notifications per-space.

@richvdh richvdh mentioned this pull request Mar 25, 2021
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I think the concept looks good but I think we need to clarify what bits are server-only, client-only and server and client. I think splitting these chunks apart will help answer a lot of questions with the spec. Particularly for server-only the server should reject rules that it doesn't understand so that clients know they won't get notified.


Events sent by a user are not expected to cause any notification actions when
they are received by that same user (whether on the same or a different
device), so are excluded from this process.
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There was discussion in other MSCs about allowing a user to call their other devices or transfer files between their devices. How does this rule affect that?

Homeservers should check the content of any uploaded
`m.notification_attribute_data` events, and reject any malformed events with a
400 error and `M_BAD_JSON`. However, implementations should be resilient to
malformed data.
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What is malformed? Is malformed any value the server doesn't understand such as extra attributes? Or is it only known keys with invalid values? (ex: "mxid": 17)

strings in the `keywords` list matches, the `m.keyword` attribute should be
set.

If any entry in the `keywords` list is not a simple string, that entry is
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What is a "simple string"?

Why not reject non-string elements as specified earlier?


* `room_notif`: a case-*insensitive* match for the string `@room`, provided
the sender of the event has power level greater or equal to that required
for `notifications`.
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Is this the state of the art? I would expect that sending a message such as You can notify everyone in the room by sending `@room`. to not notify people. I see that this is currently not the case but do we want to 1. solve this here or at least 2. explicitly defer and suggest how this may be fixed? (Maybe by adding a room_notif_precise key in the future to replace this one or that this algorithm is expected to be change to be precise in the future?


The `profile` property refers to an `account_data` event of type
`m.notifications_profile.<profile>`, and is composed of the characters `[a-z]`,
`[0-9]`, `-`, and `_`.
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Why are we storing data (the profile key) in the event type? Is there precedent for this?

any malformed events with a 400 error and `M_BAD_JSON`. However,
implementations should be resilient to malformed data. Homeservers should allow
unrecognised actions or attributes to be referenced in the mapping, to allow
future extension.
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Is this desired? How will the client know if an attribute or action is supported by the server? Users will be confused if they enable m.file_transfer in their client but don't get notified when a file transfer starts.

The `none` profile id is reserved, and servers should not allow clients to
upload `m.notifications_profile.none` events. This can be used to disable all
notifications without discarding other configuration that the user may have
set.
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Should we namespace special profiles? Or are we confident that we won't need any past none?


We don't specify a "default" notification profile, leaving it up to the server
implementation to provide sensible defaults. The example shown above is
anticipated to be a good starting point.
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While we don't specify a default profile should we name the default profile so that clients can agree?

  • m.default is the default profile for new devices. Otherwise a normal profile.
  • m.desktop is the default profile for desktop devices, falls back to m.default.
  • m.mobile is the default profile for mobile devices, falls back to m.default.

Of course clients are welcome to use their own defaults but it might be nice to standardize on the "default default".

Comment on lines +111 to +112
* `keywords`: an array of strings which form "notification keywords". See
`m.keyword` below. If `keywords` is absent, the list is implicitly empty.
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Is order significant? Should the client or server sort them to prevent anyone from depending on it?

proposals/2785-notification-attributes.md Show resolved Hide resolved
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It seems there's nothing stopping this being merged. When can we see this happening?

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richvdh commented Aug 5, 2021

It seems there's nothing stopping this being merged.

well, the lack of an implementation is a farirly major blocker. I don't know of any immediate plans to implement it.

Comment on lines +106 to +107
This event can be set at the global level. (Room-level overrides will be a
future extension.)
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I think that room-level overrides are a critical part of this, leaving it out seems half-baked. If this were to replace push rules' core functionality, I think that room-level overrides (muting some, making others verbose), something people enjoy on many clients today, has to be a core part of this.

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this is broken thinking: you are saying "there is no point doing anything unless you fix all the world's problems". If you follow that route, nothing will ever be done, because fixing all the world's problems is impossible.

The only way we can ever hope to make any progress is by splitting down the problem and taking an iterative approach.

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My intention isn't to fix all problems at once, I'm just saying that this is a critical feature for a MVP that makes a good comparison to push rules

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Causing regressions in features when changing underlying components of software isn't good for users.

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