Currently, the registry has to keep checking for new messages; it can't be notified by the writer that there are new messages. I don't know about if this software providing a web interface does that or not, although it is something that I would want to define the protocol of, which would be independent of the implementation, and would be simple to implement even to just use curl without many complicated commands. (I have no intention to use the web interface, and currently do not use twtxt at all, but if I do, I would like to have this protocol, and for other servers (maybe even this software) to support it.)
Of course for many things, microblogging is too short so I would use NNTP instead (which I already have set up). But many things are short and are not worth making many NNTP messages just for that, so twtxt may be helpful.
Between instances of twtxt.net I actually plan to do this. I'm working on more "federation" features that allow users to be spread out over multiple twtxt.net instances.
Of course this doesn't for folks in the twtxt community that just host a twtxt.txt file, but that's okay.
Well, what I was suggesting was a way that you can do this even if you are not using the twtxt.net software; after writing to your twtxt.txt file you could use curl to notify a twtxt.net instance or any other server that implements this same protocol for notification. (The reason being so that registries that collect everyone's messages together need not keep checking for new messages. Of course, this would be fully optional, as not everyone is going to use the notification protocol.)
That is true, and I actually think the default length may be slightly short even for microblogging in some cases (although I would define a limit in bytes (and perhaps also character cells) instead of characters; if you need multibyte characters then you can probably write what you need in less characters anyways). This is true in other software dealing with twtxt format too, not only twtxt.net.
For full blogs, long notices, full discussions, etc, I think NNTP is much better, so I would continue to use that. But for microblogging, NNTP seems rather excessive to me, so twtxt can be used for microblogging can be good; the format of twtxt is simple and is reasonable and look like good for making a timeline of short messages written by one person (that is what is microblogging anyways, isn't it?).
Of course for many things, microblogging is too short so I would use NNTP instead (which I already have set up). But many things are short and are not worth making many NNTP messages just for that, so twtxt may be helpful.