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XSF: XMPP Standards Foundation

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XMPP Extensions and Specifications (XEP)

Read about the new and changes and updates in January 2026:

xmpp.org/2026/02/the-xmpp-news

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洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:'s avatar
洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:

@hongminhee@hollo.social

Today I discovered an interesting inconsistency in Activity Streams specs while investigating a Fedify issue.

The question: How should we interpret URLs like "icon": "https://example.com/avatar.png"?

JSON-LD context (https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams): @type: "@id" → “This is an IRI reference, dereference it to fetch an ActivityStreams object.”

Activity Streams Primer: “assume that a bare string is the href of a Link object, not an id” (no dereferencing)

Result: JSON-LD processor-based implementations try to parse PNG files as JSON and fail.

Turns out w3c/activitystreams#595 already discusses the same issue for href properties. I added a note that icon, image, etc. have the same problem.

Once again reminded of how tricky spec work can be…

洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:'s avatar
洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:

@hongminhee@hollo.social

Today I discovered an interesting inconsistency in Activity Streams specs while investigating a Fedify issue.

The question: How should we interpret URLs like "icon": "https://example.com/avatar.png"?

JSON-LD context (https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams): @type: "@id" → “This is an IRI reference, dereference it to fetch an ActivityStreams object.”

Activity Streams Primer: “assume that a bare string is the href of a Link object, not an id” (no dereferencing)

Result: JSON-LD processor-based implementations try to parse PNG files as JSON and fail.

Turns out w3c/activitystreams#595 already discusses the same issue for href properties. I added a note that icon, image, etc. have the same problem.

Once again reminded of how tricky spec work can be…

洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:'s avatar
洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:

@hongminhee@hollo.social

Today I discovered an interesting inconsistency in Activity Streams specs while investigating a Fedify issue.

The question: How should we interpret URLs like "icon": "https://example.com/avatar.png"?

JSON-LD context (https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams): @type: "@id" → “This is an IRI reference, dereference it to fetch an ActivityStreams object.”

Activity Streams Primer: “assume that a bare string is the href of a Link object, not an id” (no dereferencing)

Result: JSON-LD processor-based implementations try to parse PNG files as JSON and fail.

Turns out w3c/activitystreams#595 already discusses the same issue for href properties. I added a note that icon, image, etc. have the same problem.

Once again reminded of how tricky spec work can be…

洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:'s avatar
洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:

@hongminhee@hollo.social

Today I discovered an interesting inconsistency in Activity Streams specs while investigating a Fedify issue.

The question: How should we interpret URLs like "icon": "https://example.com/avatar.png"?

JSON-LD context (https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams): @type: "@id" → “This is an IRI reference, dereference it to fetch an ActivityStreams object.”

Activity Streams Primer: “assume that a bare string is the href of a Link object, not an id” (no dereferencing)

Result: JSON-LD processor-based implementations try to parse PNG files as JSON and fail.

Turns out w3c/activitystreams#595 already discusses the same issue for href properties. I added a note that icon, image, etc. have the same problem.

Once again reminded of how tricky spec work can be…

洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:'s avatar
洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary:

@hongminhee@hollo.social

Today I discovered an interesting inconsistency in Activity Streams specs while investigating a Fedify issue.

The question: How should we interpret URLs like "icon": "https://example.com/avatar.png"?

JSON-LD context (https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams): @type: "@id" → “This is an IRI reference, dereference it to fetch an ActivityStreams object.”

Activity Streams Primer: “assume that a bare string is the href of a Link object, not an id” (no dereferencing)

Result: JSON-LD processor-based implementations try to parse PNG files as JSON and fail.

Turns out w3c/activitystreams#595 already discusses the same issue for href properties. I added a note that icon, image, etc. have the same problem.

Once again reminded of how tricky spec work can be…