@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.
@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.
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. 🤷♂️
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.
@pwinn
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.