HONK(1)

NAME
honk - federated status conveyance

DESCRIPTION
The honk utility processes federated status updates and other microblog activities. This is the user manual. For administration, see honk(8). For other documentation, refer to the intro(1).

This manual is still incomplete. It'll get there eventually.

  Honkers
Initially, there won't be much to see after logging in. In order to receive regular updates from other users, they must first be added to one's honker collection. Begin at the honkers tab. The url field is required. Either of two forms are accepted, the user's handle (or webfinger) or their ActivityPub actor URL.

    @user@example.social
    https://example.social/users/user

The name field is optional and will be automatically inferred. The notes field is reserved for user remarks. Fellow honkers may be added to one or more combos to suit one's organizational preferences. These are accessed via the combos tab and allow easy access to particular groupings. The special combo name of one hyphen ‘-’ will exclude a honker's posts from the primary feed.

It is also possible to skip subscribing. In this case, regular posts are not received, but replies and posts fetched via other means will appear in the relevant combos.

In addition to honkers, it is possible to subscribe to a hashtag collection. (Where supported.) Enter the collection URL for url.

Separately, hashtags may be added to a combo by creating a honker with a url of the desired hashtag (including #). Several hashtags may thus be collected in a single combo.

  Viewing
The primary feed is accessed via the home tab. It will contain posts from all honkers except those specifically excluded. Posts mentioning the user, both followed and not, are collected under the @me tab. Other feeds include first which excludes replies, the user defined options under the combos subheading, and the events page which lists only events.

Individual honks contain a visual representation of the honker's ID, their name, the activity (with a link back to origin), a link to the parent post if applicable, and the convoy (thread) identifier. A red border indicates the honk is not public. Screenshot below.

screenshot of one honk: screenshot-honk.png

Available actions are:

bonk
    Share with followers. Not available for nonpublic honks.

honk back
    Reply.

mute
    Mute this entire thread. Existing posts are hidden, and future posts will not appear in any feed.

zonk
    Delete this post. When deleting one's own post, other servers will be requested to remove it, but this is unreliable.

ack Acknowledge reading this post. Typically if it's a reply to one's own post.

save
    Save this honk to the saved tab to find later.

untag me
    Sometimes a thread goes on entirely too long. Untag will hide further replies to the selected post, but without muting the entire thread. Replies higher in the tree are still received.

edit
    Change it up. Alas, Update activities do not federate reliably.

  Refresh
Clicking the refresh button will load new honks, if any. New honks will be subtly highlighted.

  Honking
Refer to the honk(5) section of the manual for details of honk composition.

  Search
Find old honks. It's basic substring match with a few extensions. The following keywords are supported:

site
    Substring match on the post domain name.

honker
    Exact match, either AP actor or honker nickname.

-   Negate term.

Example:
    honker:goose big moose -footloose
This query will find honks by the goose about the big moose, but excluding those about footloose.

  Filtering
Sometimes other users of the federation can get unruly. The honk filtering and censorship system, hfcs(1), can be of great use to restore order to one's timeline. Accessed via the filters menu item.

  Xzone
The xzone page lists recently seen honkers that are not otherwise tracked. It also allows the import of external objects via URL, either individual posts or actor URLs, in which case their recent outbox is imported.

  Account
It's all about you. An avatar may be selected from the funzone by adding “avatar: filename.png” to one's profile info. If truly necessary.

Some options to customize the site appearance:

skinny
    Use a narrower column for the main display.

apple
    Prefer Apple links for maps. The default is OpenStreetMap.

ENVIRONMENT
honk is designed to work with most browsers, but for optimal results it is recommended to use a 2015 or later Thinkpad X1 Carbon with 2560x1440 screen running OpenBSD and chromium at 150% scaling with the dwm window manager. This will enable the main menu to line up just right.

SEE ALSO
intro(1), honk(8)

STANDARDS

ActivityPub: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

Activity Vocabulary: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/

HISTORY
Started March 2019.

AUTHORS
Ted Unangst @tedu@honk.tedunangst.com: https://honk.tedunangst.com/u/tedu

CAVEATS
Completing some operations, such as subscribing to new honkers, requires an aptitude for clipboard use and tab switching along with a steady hand. For the most part, these are infrequent operations, but they are also the first operations new users encounter. This is not ideal.

The ActivityPub standard is subject to interpretation, and not all implementations are as enlightened as honk.

BUGS
It's a feature.