docs/manual.txt (view raw)
1
2Instructions for using honk.
3
4This is the user manual. Please refer to admin.txt for administration.
5
6-- posting
7
8Should work as expected.
9
10Limited markdown support:
11 **bold** and *italics*
12 `code` and ```code block```
13 > quote
14
15Large images are rescaled and reduced.
16
17The honk back button will prefill the forms for replies.
18
19-- sensitive honks
20
21A honk that begins with the danger zone indication, DZ:, will be marked
22sensitive, using the first line as a summary (spoiler text).
23
24Alternatively, a spicy honk that begins with three or more peppers (U+1F336)
25will be marked sensitive as well, with a subject line consisting of peppers.
26
27-- following
28
29In order to follow somebody, you need to enter one of two identifiers.
30
31The easiest is probably their handle, the thing that resembles an email.
32@name@example.com for example.
33
34Alternatively, one may directly enter the actor ID, which is a URL that looks
35like https://example.com/users/name.
36
37Followed honkers may be assigned to combos, listing all their honks together.
38
39Followed honkers will appear on the main feedtube unless silenced. Honkers may
40be silenced by adding them to a combo named "-". (One dash.)
41
42Selecting just peeping won't actually follow them. (Incomplete feature.)
43Can be useful for managing as part of a combo, however.
44
45-- xzone
46
47Individual honks may be manually fetched via the xzone.
48
49Additionally, entering a honker URL will fetch all their recent honks.
50
51A list of recently known honkers will appear as well.
52
53-- zonking
54
55You can zonk anything you like (or dislike), either your own honk or
56those of others that you're tired of seeing. Be advised that deletion
57works poorly in a federated environment. It's more like please disregard.
58
59The zonkzone supports muting unwanted contacts. One may mute an actor
60(zonker), a domain (zomain), thread (zonvoy), or word (zord).
61
62-- privacy
63
64Posted honks are public. The federated environment lacks robust privacy
65controls.
66
67Received messages are only visible when logged in, regardless of addressing.
68Content from outside is not publicly rehosted, unless bonked.
69
70Received messages that are less than public are tagged with a red border.
71As a special exception to the public honking rule, replies to limited messages
72will be restricted as much as possible. Note that ActivityPub leaks. Do
73not use honk for posting truly private information.
74
75-- emus and memes
76
77A list of available emus and memes appears in the funzone.
78
79Emus such as :example: will be inlined into posts.
80
81Memes such as `meme: example.mp4` will be appended to posts.
82
83-- hoots
84
85Link and inline a hoot and replies from that other bird site.
86hoot: https://twitter.com/tedunangst/status/839169710675611658
87
88-- cleanup
89
90One should occasionally run `honk cleanup` to free up internal space in the
91database. This deletes honks older than 30 days, but not those posted by a
92user.
93
94One may also run `honk reduce [honker]` to delete honks older than 3 days.
95This is useful to reduce the space requirements from following image bots.
96
97(Neither command runs vacuum, so the file size will not immediately shrink.)
98
99-- add user
100
101Running `honk adduser` can add additional users. This is discouraged.
102
103-- proxy
104
105honk requires a TLS terminating reverse proxy be configured. It communicates
106with other servers via https URLs.
107
108If the proxy is configured to support caching, be mindful of the fact that
109ActivityPub requests vary based on the Accept and Content-Type headers.
110
111ActivityPub in practice uses HTTP signatures to verify requests. In order for
112this to work, the backend server must receive certain header fields
113unmodified. In particular, the Host header and the message content cannot be
114altered.
115
116Specifically, for nginx: `proxy_set_header Host $http_host;`