Sampling YakiHonne, a Long-Form NOSTR Client

Dad once owned a Luscombe (source)

Where am I coming from?

It's no exaggeration to say that I am a writer. Although writing is only one of many things I've done in the course of my career, I consider it important.

Beginning with an article or two in early microcomputer magazines (Kilobaud, Compute!), I later wrote documentation as an engineer and even worked for several years as a technical writer supporting computer and network engineering.

For the better part of the last decade, I've been writing and publishing a great deal of long-form content, beginning on Steemit and moving to Hive when the community forked due to dissatisfaction with a hostile takeover.

Through the years, I've lobbied "The Powers That Be" at Steemit/Hive (with mixed success) for certain changes and upgrades to their publishing operations. I managed to persuade Steemit to change its policy, allowing authors to perpetually edit/update their work.

For many reasons beyond the scope of this article, editing is a crucial capability. Even in the world of blockchains and cryptographically verified author identity, editing is easily handled by the means of releasing a series of "versions" of an article, retaining the entire history of its development while only revealing the most recent edition at the user interface level.

What am I doing on YakiHonne?

Part of today's exercise is figuring out the differences in the implementation of the Markdown "standard" between Hive and YakiHonne. It's been quite an adventure thus far!

I've already discovered GUI flaws and struggled with substantial output differences while trying to use the Markdown editor on YakiHome. At one point, I lost all my work on this article because I inadvertently left the page...

As a consequence, I've shifted over to using the Markdown editor on the PeakD interface to Hive, doing my edits, and then dropping the whole source text into the YakiHonne editor to check compatibility... So there's definitely some room for improvement in the editor!

Working this way, I am also hopeful that I'll be able to cross-post this article on both Hive and YakiHonne in order to expose Hive users to YakiHonne and vice-versa; presently, both Hive and YakiHonne have different advantages and drawbacks, and I have to believe that mutual exposure can only help both platforms.

Early YakiHonne observations, good and bad.

YakiHonne is interesting. "Long form content," in contrast to ephemeral Twitter/Tweet type posts, is a different style of publishing. Because we are human authors, our articles appear chronologically—after all, we create them one at a time—but we would like to think that the things we write have some level of permanence, and are (for the most part) more than just brief observations that we toss off for effect.

In the following list, I've used one or more Pluses (+) to indicate something about YakiHonne that I consider a positive feature, and one or more Minuses (-) to indicate something I consider a negative feature. Unmarked entries are simple observations.

+ + I love that Markdown is supported

While not perfectly powerful, Markdown is an easy to learn means of formatting text into attractive, easy to read documents on the internet.

- No image storage

At the time of this writing, users can't upload images when using the platform. While you can (and YakiHonne encourages you to) embed images in your articles, you must host them somewhere and embed them in the form of external links.

- - - Don't leave the editor page!!!

I was really bummed, after banging out an introduction and an initial outline, to accidentally branch away from the editor page. Guess what? All my work disappeared! 😳

Yes, this is currently a built-in problem with YakiHonne. All content will be lost if you leave the edit page!!! So for your own good, use an external editor.

You can't embed links everywhere

Certain markdown functions that work on Hive just don't work here. One specific example; you can't embed links in "H" type headers (e.g. <H3>No Links Here</H3>).

This is not a fatal flaw, especially since if you use a series of hashtags to create headers (e.g. ### Links work in this style header) you won't have a problem.

- Confusing, overwritten profile

It took a while to figure this out; several fields of the profile overlap one another, but I was (finally) able to fiddle them separate by clicking on the "edit" icons in various combinations.

- - Minimum recommended article size; 1500 words? Seriously?

Real authors write articles of all lengths. I see no possible need or reason to handcuff participants on this platform, constraining them to a minimum article size. All that will do is stifle creativity and variety.

Of course, as this is my first foray into YakiHonne land, I will (at least for this entry) comply with a minimum length, but I reserve the right to complain bitterly about it. YakiHonne, are you listening?

- Can't ZAP!

I've tried to ZAP a fellow author on YakiHonne, and for reasons I have not yet been able to determine, the ZAP/Lightning button is not functional. It may be a setup issue; I can ZAP when using Amethyst on Android, but not YakiHonne on Mac (yet).

+ + Incentives to participate

This is a potentially very good thing, and apparently it's working; I'm here, along with other fine authors, right?

The powers that be behind YakiHonne are putting their money where their mouth is. They are dangling bounties under the nose of writers, promising to reward good articles with bounties in the form of significant amounts of sats.

We'll see how that pans out, but it clearly has drawn some positive interest. Somehow, contests, sats, and other inducements do encourage participation. Good talent always enjoys a challenge.

Bugs, Oh, My!

Ah, bugs are inevitable... Somehow, on this page I ended up with an endlessly spinning and bouncing rounded-edge cube. File this with the bad formatting of profile data, and it's an indicator that we are so early... Keep up the good work, YakiHonne; I'm sure you'll slay the bugs.

Some things I would love to see.

I've always been a dreamer; one of those people who's never completely satisfied. Give me an inch, and I'll ask for a mile; a hippo and I'll want an elephant.

Here are a few "Scenes I'd like to see" on YakiHonne in the future (as in, How long is it gonna take you to get this feature up and running?).

Better and more tools

I would really love to see YakiHonne (or for that matter, any long-form nostr publishing platform) provide better organizational tools for prolific writers who have mass quantities of content to offer.

Assurances of longevity

Is YakiHonne a fly-by-night organization? If I spend my time writing and publishing content, how long can I expect my hard work to remain stored and saved on YakiHonne?

Because Hive is blockchain-based, and issues monetary rewards, I have a reasonable expectation that my work will be available there for a long time to come. Can I expect the same from YakiHonne?

Ability to back up content

I would like to be able to download and archive all of my content on a local device.

Index/Table of Contents

I write about many different things in a wide range of categories. My preferred platform should provide a helpful way for my followers and readers to access all my content, and not just in reverse chronological order.

I've manually implemented a hierarchical table of contents for my writing on the Hive blockchain. Please have a look at my library to better understand what I mean.

I would love to see YakiHonne scan my articles for keywords and especially for #tags —in order to automatically create a presentation like my Hive library to help my readers access my thoughts on any topic.

Please, YakiHonne devs, save me from being "only as good as my last article."

Draft capability

For a good author experience, the ability to maintain and edit multiple article drafts is essential. Have a look at https://peakd.com and the Hive blockchain for a good example.

Conclusion: Let's Freakin' Go!

This a only a preliminary glimpse of my YakiHonne experience, not intended to be critical, but rather constructively encouraging.

I wish YakiHonne the best of success. The more players and options we have available using the nostr protocol, the better I'll like it.

Principals and developers at YakiHonne? I hope to hear from you!