honk
—
federated status conveyance
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.
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.
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
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.
badonk
- Please no.
edit
- Change it up.
Clicking the refresh button will load new honks, if any. New honks will be
subtly highlighted.
The following keyboard shortcuts may also be used to navigate.
- j
- Scroll to next honk.
- k
- Scroll to previous honk.
- r
- Refresh.
- s
- Scroll down to oldest newest.
- m
- Open menu.
- esc
- Close menu.
- /
- Search.
Refer to the honk(5) section of the manual
for details of honk composition.
Find old honks. It's basic substring match with a few extensions. The following
keywords are supported:
- @me
- Honks mentioning the user.
- @self
- Honks by the user.
- before:
- Honks posted before YYYY-MM-DD.
- after:
- As above.
- 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.
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.
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. Probably easier to use the search box for this.
It's all about you. An avatar may be selected from the
funzone meme collection by adding “avatar:
filename.png” to one's profile info. If truly necessary. A banner may
be set by specifying “banner: image.jpg”. See
honk(8) for more about the funzone.
Some options to customize the site appearance:
- skinny
- Use a narrower column for the main display.
- omit images
- Omit img tags, to lighten page loads on slow connections.
- apple
- Prefer Apple links for maps. The default is OpenStreetMap.
- reaction
- Pick an emoji for reacting to posts.
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.
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
.