@Jdreben @Tattooed_mummy @davew The problem with that theory is that world exists today, and apps don't cut them off. There isn't a character limit in the ActivityPub protocol, nor in Mastodon's federation code. Long posts end up with a "Read more" button in the main feed to expand the post, and that's it. It doesn't break things, it's not a problem. If you don't want to read more, then you don't click the toggle.
I 100% agree! There should be no limit, or 64K like my server does.
Unfortunately, Mastodon's core code is ultimately controlled by one person whose opinions on things are possibly as strong as yours, and he seems convinced this "compromise" solution is great. I don't understand it, but it annoys me less than his choice to STRIP OUT existing markdown formatting. 🤷♂️
exactly.
unlimited of course is not exactly true. there is a limit somewhere, but not arbitrary and with the usual bs about how it's better to be shorter. you should write just enough words. it's like that great scene in amadeus where the emperor says it's a great symphony mozart, but there are too many notes. ;-)
i don't worry about mastodon, i just want to be clear we haven't yet gotten to where we need to go. we'll get there i think.
btw -- stripping out markdown is actually a good decision because it can be added back slowly over time, and we can figure out what works and doesn't.
i have an html stripper in FeedLand, and I have it stripping out everything but <p> and <br>, for now.
i also plan to make it something each instance can decide for themselves. how much or little HTML do they want to view.
also we support full markdown on outgoing stuff. and it's in the feeds we generate too.
Yeah, I can understand servers stripping out HTML for sure. I guess the thing that annoys me is that if I use asterisks to *emphasize* a thing, I don't think those asterisks should be removed. The entire point of markdown is that if you don't render the markdown, it's still legible. So maybe I post on a server that renders markdown, and people here see the emphasis as I intend it. And maybe some servers render markdown and see it as I see it, while others don't and just see bare asterisks. But mastodon *strips out* the asterisks themselves! So there's nothing left even for other servers that want to render markdown!
That's what annoys me.
So on my server my previous post has some italics for emphasis because I used asterisks.
https://qoto.org/@pwinn/109773576636725769
But on your server, it doesn't. And couldn't, even if your server wanted to support markdown. Because the asterisks were removed while federating.
I know!
I have my own instance at masto.land and it supports markdown and has a 10K character limit.
but it does no good, as you say, it all gets stripped out.
we have a ways to go yet.
but this stuff is not mysterious.
@pwinn @davew this is worth filing an issue over but it might be your servers fault. In ActivityPub, there’s a field for content but there’s also a field for the contents source. You’re server might not be sending the source, but if it is, it seems like that should be rendered instead of the content if Masto doesn’t like the content.
@pwinn — I agree. I think that’s a bug.
@pwinn @Jdreben @Tattooed_mummy
also just want to add that's exactly how we do it in FeedLand and it works perfectly.
see the downarrow in the lower right corner of the post. click it to see the rest of the text.
so when you scroll through it you get a uniform size, makes it easy to scan, but when you see something you want to read fully, just click the arr.
also the document icon in the lower left opens the item on its own page.
@pwinn @Jdreben @Tattooed_mummy
that's actually a good way to deal with it. so why not just get rid of the character limit altogether.