@Martin Holland Vanilla Mastodon cannot generate any text formatting in any shape or form AFAIK. You can be lucky that it can display a small subset of it, and even that has only been possible since October, 2022, when Mastodon 4 was released.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #TextFormatting

@hexaheximal There's no syntax for it on mastodon.social. You simply can't do it there.

Some users have already mentioned Markdown which is supported by a few Mastodon forks, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey and its several forks (including but not limited to Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey and Catodon), Mitra, (streams), Forte and optionally also by Friendica, probably also by others.

For completion's sake, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte mainly use BBcode.

The syntax for quotes is either [quote]Here goes the quote[/quote] or [quote="Whoever is quoted"]Here goes the quote[/quote].

Both in-line code and code blocks are delimited with . At least Hubzilla can also do code highlighting if an appropriate plug-in is installed on the hub and the [code] tag has one of the following parameters: php, css, mysql, sql, abap, diff, html, perl, ruby, vbscript, avrc, dtd, java, xml, cpp, python, javascript, js, json, sh.

Lastly, (streams) and Forte even support HTML.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Catodon #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Markdown #BBcode #HTML #TextFormatting

@Larry Garfield @Renaud Chaput In this case, the handling of long-form content should be configurable per account.

The settings could be:

• Render fully (default; what the devs of Hubzilla and (streams) want)
• Always link (what Mastodon does with Article-type objects)
• Link if title or subject is available, otherwise render fully
• Link if title or subject is available, otherwise block
• Block everything over 500 characters

Maybe there could be an additional setting for formatted content in general:

• Render fully (default)
• Render partially (the Mastodon 4 way right now)
• Remove all formatting (what Mastodon up until 3 did)
• Block

#Long #LongPost #LongPosts #LongPostMeta #CWLong #CWLongPost #CWLongPostMeta #500Characters #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #TextFormatting #RichText

@ᴚ uɐᗡ It's called a quote. Standard feature on Friendica, Hubzilla (where I am), (streams), the now-deceased rest of the family, Misskey and all its forks etc., basically everywhere that isn't Mastodon.

Within Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams), it's handled basically the same way as on good old bulletin-board forums: in BBcode.
[quote]if the process is really that involved and if they can fix it[/quote]

(streams) also has ways of doing that with Markdown or HTML.

There are various different ways of getting that code, also depending on whether one replies to a post or a comment.

ActivityPub uses Rich Text for formatting. So Friendica converts this into the corresponding formatting in Rich Text, and on Hubzilla and (streams), the optional ActivityPub bridge PubCrawl does that.

Mastodon, in turn, has introduced some Rich Text displaying capabilities with version 4.0.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #TextFormatting #BBcode #RichText

@Daniel de Kay The biggest cultural difference based on server software has to be between Mastodon on the one hand and the Mike Macgirvin creations Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) on the other hand.

Not only do they have vastly different user bases, but they developed independently from one another. When the Mastodon culture developed, those who shaped it didn't even know the other side, so they couldn't adopt any of its culture.

Said other side's culture dates back to 2010 when Friendica was launched as Mistpark, and since that was almost six years before Mastodon, it couldn't be inspired by Mastodon's culture either.

Add to that that these respective cultures are greatly shaped by technical features and limitations or the lack thereof.

Mastodon's culture is largely built around its 500-character limit which is ample for your typical phone-wielding Mastodon user. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) don't have any defined character limit whatsoever, and its target audience is largely on desktop or laptop computers, often running Linux, with large screens and full-size hardware keyboards.

So it's the most normal thing in the world for them to write in one post as much as they want while Mastodon users debate whether threads are good, or you should always limit yourself to 500 characters or less.

Also, alt-text. Mastodon has many disabled users, including blind or visually-impaired users. And it has a dedicated alt-text field for each image. On top of that, it offers 1,500 characters for each alt-text which, in connection with the 500-character limit for toots, has people write detailed image descriptions and explanations and put them into the alt-text. That's often information that doesn't even belong in alt-text, but there's no room for it elsewhere.

Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have unlimited room, so putting stuff into alt-text because the post text is too limited seems ridiculous. But they don't have a vocal disabled community, so there's little interest in accessibility. And neither of them has a dedicated alt-text field. Alt-text is supported, but it has to be manually grafted into the image-embedding code in the post. And there's no official documentation for that, I think not even for Friendica which is the only one out of the three with actually useful end-user documentation.

It's similar with content warnings. On Mastodon, they're put into the repurposed summary field, and next to nobody knows that it's a repurposed summary field rather than invented for content warnings from scratch. So since Mastodon has a content warning field, writer-side content warnings are huge, but also cause for drama.

Mastodon 4.0 has introduced filters that can create reader-side content warnings, but hardly anyone uses them, even fewer people support them with keywords or hashtags, many don't even know this feature exists, and it's generally ignored because it's un-Mastodon.

The Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams) complex doesn't have a content warning field. Hubzilla and (streams) have a summary field labelled as such. Friendica doesn't even have that; it uses a pair of BBcode tags for that.

And within their own ecosystem, they don't even need it. They've got the "NSFW app" instead, an over-one-decade-old, optional, simple-as-anything substring filter that automatically hides entire posts with all media and everything behind content warnings if it finds one of the entered keywords or hashtags.

So they can't understand Mastodon's commotion about content warnings, and Mastodon users can't understand why they don't add Mastodon-style content warnings.

And then there are all the things that were or are being debated on Mastodon and whether or not it should introduce them. Especially the second-wave Twitter refugees are often staunchly against them.

Full-text search and quote-tweets are being actively used on Twitter to track down and harass members of minorities who have fled to Mastodon. Of course, they don't want Mastodon to introduce either. That is, in the case of full-text search, Mastodon has found a solution, but one that doesn't really federate to the rest of the Fediverse.

Quotes and text formatting are seen as bad, too. Many don't know quotes because Twitter doesn't have them, and so they think quotes could be used as tools of harassment. And both are seen as making Mastodon feel less like Mastodon and more complicated.

Friendica and Hubzilla had all this before there was Mastodon, and (streams) inherited it from its long line of ancestors. Their users have gotten so used to having all this that they don't understand what the problems should be, also because they're so detached from Mastodon's culture. So they keep on using these features unashamedly, even around Mastodon users.

Some differences are rather simple. Take mentions, for example. Friendica has always used long names for mentions, as does its offspring. Mastodon users may find that freaky. Meanwhile, Friendica, Hubzilla or (streams) users may find Mastodon's mentions cryptic because they use the short name. But even they matter.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #FediverseCulture #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #CW #CWs #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Quotes #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoost #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuotedShares #TextFormatting #FullTextSearch