@Bonobo No, it doesn't.

Depending on the hub, it does have a choice of themes (Netzgemeinde and hubzilla.de don't), and even then, you can tinker with the layout a lot if you want to.

But it's hard-coded to no more than three columns, one centre column plus a maximum of two sidebars. And since it doesn't have the Mastodon client API implemented, and it never will, you can't use it with third-party apps either.

Be very careful, though, if you do move: Hubzilla is not just Mastodon with more characters and text formatting. There's hardly anything in the Fediverse that does *blogging that's more different from Mastodon than Hubzilla.

On the other hand, Hubzilla probably has the best built-in help of all Fediverse server applications. And it has its own support forums, so if you need help, you don't have to shout into the void and hope that someone will catch your hashtags.

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@That Old Guy with the Beard @libertyoftheforest @Melissa BearTrix Actually, you must never do either.

You must never put any exclusive information such as explanations only into the alt-text.

That's because there are people who cannot access alt-text, be it due to physical disabilities (you can't access alt-text if you don't have at least one working hand, at least not easily), be it due to their choice of software.

If there's any information not in the image, not in the post text, only in the alt-text, then these people will not be able to get this information. It's lost to them.

So do not use alt-text to expand your 500-character limit!

If you need more than 500 characters once, write a thread.

If you need more than 500 characters regularly, move to where you have more characters, e.g.:

• a Mastodon server with a higher character count
• a Mastodon fork with a higher character count
• Misskey (3,000 characters)
• Sharkey (at least 3,000 characters, often even more)
• Akkoma (at least 5,000 characters)
• Friendica (16,777,215 characters)

It's all part of the Fediverse, i.e. it's all fully federated with Mastodon. (Greetings from Hubzilla which has over 16M characters, too).

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@Ahimsa @Paul_IPv6 @Izzy I'm occasionally working on my own extensive wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse. It's still very much a WIP, and not even half of the planned pages are done, and it specialises in the Fediverse (not only Mastodon, by the way). But maybe you'll find something there that's useful for static websites as well.

Here you go.

If that shouldn't suffice, I've got more than 50 articles, pages etc. about alt-texts and image descriptions linked on this page, including 25 articles by Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes.

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@jandi (Hubzilla seems fascinating btw!)
It's a monster that can be a challenge to tackle if you expect something that works like Mastodon. But on the plus side, it may have the best built-in documentation of all Fediverse server applications, and it has got its own support forum.

Oh, and nomadic identity works as advertised.

CC: @silverpill @Holos Social

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@silverpill Would be interesting to add Hubzilla's Zot6 and (streams)' Nomad (which would be Zot12 if it wasn't incompatible with Zot6) to the list.

By the way: Forte doesn't require a gateway to communicate with non-nomadic ActivityPub. A fully cloned Forte channel can communicate with a Mastodon account without jumping through hoops. Remember that Forte has almost fully-featured Hubzilla-level nomadic identity (i.e. everything except real-time syncing between channel instances; unlike Hubzilla and (streams) which do sync in real time, it needs a cronjob for that) directly built into its core.

(streams) does support nomadic identity via ActivityPub. But internally, it uses and relies upon Nomad for its nomadic identity. It only supports nomadic identity via ActivityPub a) because it was used as a development platform for just this and b) in order to be able to understand cloned nomadic ActivityPub actors elsewhere. This is also why it isn't possible to move from (streams) to Forte, to move from Forte to (streams) or to clone between (streams) and Forte.

(streams) itself doesn't require gateways to communicate with Mastodon & Co. either. It speaks three protocols natively: its own Nomad, Hubzilla's Zot6 and (optionally, but on by default) standard ActivityPub.

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@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

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@Pino Carafa Well, my problem is not the alt-text.

I used to limit my alt-texts to 1,500 characters because Mastodon and its forks truncate longer alt-texts at the 1,500-character mark. In the future, I will limit them to 512 characters because Misskey and its forks should truncate them at that mark if they're longer, but instead, they delete them.

But in addition to my alt-texts, I describe my original images once more (= twice altogether). The other description is what I call the "long description", and it goes directly into the post text (as opposed to the alt-text). I don't have a character limit to worry about (over 16.7 million), so I can do what's outright unimaginable from a Mastodon point of view.

It's this long description that's causing trouble.

That is, I wouldn't wonder if the Mastodon HOA were to sanction me for my alt-text not being detailed enough when I limit it to 512 characters. In fact, I wouldn't wonder if they were to sanction me because a 1,500-character alt-text of mine is lacking important elements (descriptions of certain details, transcripts of all text within the borders of the image etc.).

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@Pino Carafa An additional advantage of this would be that I could first ask just how detailed a description they need. Like, if they really want me to spend two full days, morning to evening, to write something that'll take their screen reader three hours to read out loud.

The problem, however, is that the virtual worlds that I frequent change a lot. Everything is built by users. A place that I've shown in an image may change mere days or hours after I've been there, so when I go back to take a closer look for a detailed description, it doesn't look like on the image anymore.

Or that place may be gone entirely. For example, I could post some images from an in-world event, from places specifically built for this event. Then, two months later, someone asks for a more detailed description. But I can't write a more detailed description because I can't go back to these places, simply because these places were closed and shut down a few days after I had posted the images.

Lastly, my impression of Mastodon is still that a significant number of users do not want to ask. Whatever information they may need, they expect it all to come with the post immediately. Having to ask for a detail description or for an explanation appears to be about as bad style as having to ask for a description in the first place.

I've literally seen Mastodon toots in which people say that if they don't understand a post or an image in a post, they want an explanation to come with the post.

I've also seen a Mastodon toot in which someone said that it isn't sufficient to just say what's in an image, but you also have to describe what it looks like. Right away. And in my case, this is actually absolutely justified.

It's a catch-22: If I don't describe my images sufficiently, I risk being sanctioned by the Mastodon HOA for not describing my images sufficiently. But if I do, I risk being sanctioned by the Mastodon HOA for exceeding 500 characters in one post.

Oh, and if I chop my image descriptions into tiny chunks of no more than 500 characters, it's disturbing for my own ilk, the users of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, who are used to not having any character limits and everything being in one message, no matter how long it is. Besides, how many Mastodon users are willing to read a thread of 120 or more posts and find that more convenient than one post with 60,000 characters?

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@Pino Carafa @ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴  (🌈🦄) It does depend on the image, yes.

Most of the images in the Fediverse that aren't just text are real-life photographs. Real life is something that people know, that people are familiar with. For one, it isn't that exciting, and besides, even blind folks have at least got a rough idea about what stuff looks like.

When I post memes, my visual descriptions are limited to what's important in the context, and I only write one visual description per image which goes into the alt-text. However, I do add a full explanation in the post text because it appears to me like a sizeable amout of Mastodon users expect explanations for things they don't understand to be delivered to them immediately without them having to ask.

But my original images aren't real-life photos. They aren't screencaps from anything familiar either. They're renderings from extremely obscure 3-D virtual worlds.

On the one hand, I can't expect anyone to have an idea of what anything in my images looks like. If anyone sighted doubts this, I ask them to check what an avatar in Meta Horizon looks like, what an avatar in Roblox looks like and what a modern avatar in Second Life looks like (Flickr and Primfeed are good sources for the latter).

On the other hand, people may be super curious about these worlds beyond what matters in the context of a post, even or especially if they aren't fully sighted. Or the post itself is about the image, as in about the whole image as opposed to something specific in the image.

This means that I have to describe the entire image with every detail in it. And I don't describe the image by looking at the image with its limited resolution. I describe it by looking at the real thing, in-world, where the resolution is near-infinite.

My sighted audience sees a little white square with six pixels in a row that are ever so slightly less bright. They may not even notice it. I see a sign with two lines of text on it, I describe it all the way to the typeface, and I transcribe the text verbatim. This is how I sometimes end up with over 20 individual bits of text in one image that need to be transcribed.

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