Matrix is pretty simple too; one HTTP hit to send a message; one HTTP hit to receive a message. c.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20949477

As others have pointed out, there's also a pretty decent range of very usable "daily driver" clients these days (Element, weechat, FluffyChat, nheko, Quaternion, NeoChat all spring to mind). 2nd generation servers are also progressing well (Dendrite in Go & Conduit in Rust).

I've been interested in reading more about the Matrix client protocol, is there documentation anywhere? At least as far as sending/receiving text messages and maybe threading.

That linked message has a lot of good information though.

Thanks! I did look around the site quite extensively. That page says

> this is specific to a homeserver implementation

which suggests that it's not documenting a Matrix protocol. Unless Matrix has no standardized client protocol? Are all clients going to be homeserver-specific?

Even so I'd hope there's some document that says "Matrix standardizes server-server communication, client-server communication is out of the scope of this standard and is left to individual implementations" or something like that.

no idea who was smoking what when they wrote that paragraph; i've deleted it.

I've done that, but good luck joining a channel and writing a message before you have to answer your first PING and get disconnected again because you didn't respond in time.

Why should I care? I will never be inclined to connect to IMs via telnet. I just want something that works on mobile without holding a connection open and that supports media uploads.