This is a QT (although I suspect only those on qoto server will see it as such?
@hynek
@s_gruppetta @hynek We figured out that mastodon.social does strip any markdown-related characters. But I do not know whether that's due to the version (4.0.0rc3) used on mastodon.social, or that it is mastodon.social-specific. We noticed that on other servers running 3.5.3 the markdown characters were visible (and one could run a greasemonkey script to convert that to the stylized form).
@s_gruppetta @hynek Not only Qoto, the Quote-toot isn't limited to Qoto. Anyone using the Mastodon Glitch edition should be able to see the quote, as well as anyone using Pleroma or Misskey instances. It's a fairly standardized part of the Fediverse, except for default Mastodon.
@s_gruppetta @hynek
I know glitch does have markdown support. Not sure about the rest. You'd have to create an account on one of those other instances to see. At the very least they should probably be able to see all those markdown characters.
Actually, I just checked. Pleroma should have similar markdown support. Misskey has maybe their own flavor of markdown support so not sure how compatible it is (but they have a shitton of other feature that nobody else has).
@s_gruppetta is that based on some metadata? Because I don’t even see a link to a toot. What I meant is simply rendering the linked toot just like QTs started out on Twitter
@hynek this is what some servers will see for that my last toot
@s_gruppetta hmm. I’m not confident in solutions that need server support. I find it more likely that we’ll have an evolution like we had with Twitter: people keep doing something (eg pasting links to toots) and the clients eventually integrate it nicely. That’s how RTs and QTs were born over there. Everything that needs server work is less likely to happen IME.
@hynek And that's the issue, different people see different things.
Same with markdown, for example this below is a code block that some servers will see properly rendered, but you're likely to see just plain text
`print("This is a code block")`
**and this is in bold here**
@s_gruppetta does it strip markdown or does it strip HTML? Like is *this* word surrounded by asterisks?
@hynek so for the toot above, I wrote using back ticks and ** but I suspect you saw neither
@s_gruppetta I saw neither but I see the asterisks in https://mastodon.social/@hynek/109330904292692980 so I wonder what exactly gets stripped there. Naively I would assume that markdown-aware servers somehow render the markdown to HTML spans that get stripped on federation but of course I don’t know.
@hynek if I use plain text mode the symbols stay there but they’re rendered plain text for everyone. If I switch to markdown mode (a feature on qoto), then qoto users see it properly rendered but others see plain text with the markdown symbols stripped out
@s_gruppetta It would be interesting to see all that on the wire – I’m afraid I’ve found a rabbit hole 😳
Out of curiosity: the asterisks in my toot did not render in markdown, did they?
@hynek no, I can see the asterisk as plain text
@s_gruppetta there you go; this ain’t about markdown.
@s_gruppetta yeah because it makes the formatting part of the payload. I have just scrolled thru other people’s TLs and they also have unrendered markdown. Qoto et al are somehow interpreting markdown and that interpretation is stripped on federation to instances that don’t support it. Maybe @andrew could give more insight I remember him talking about something similar recently
🇳🇱
So just to clarify, for quotes you should see the link if your server doesnt support it.
For markdown you will see plain text if your server doesnt support it.
Gargron, the mainn dev of vanilla mastodon, is highly opinionated. He explicitly strips formatting from the markdown when it is received. He used to let the quote link stay and should be displayed but if not he might have went out of his way to strip that out too... why he keeps making it hard for people running his server to interact with others I have no idea.
But yea, sadly it seems gargron has intentionally worked to block features from other servers rendering locally even when they otherwise would have rendered.
@s_gruppetta @freemo @andrew I do not. Neither in the official client nor on Metatext
@s_gruppetta what I mean is: for yours to work, Eugen would have to change his mind and the fallback is seeing nothing. Client-side solutions (including web clients!) have the fallback of having to click a link.
@hynek suspicion correct. This is an issue - same with markdown which I can use here but most servers will strip out. As a poster you cannot guarantee how your post will be viewed across the network. But I guess that’s just the way it is