@Bri@jdking92@Rosalyn Some can also just post HTML directly. Either way, when you strip the HTML, you get the link text, without the URL. Usually, the link text is the URL without https in front. But it doesn't have to be. GoToSocial, Akoma, Iceshrimp, Pleroma, Sharky, threads, Lemmy, PiFed, and literally anything other than Mastodon allow for text in the post that is a hyperlink, but does not contain the URL as the link text. Even though Mastodon doesn't allow posting like that, though, it can display that type of post. So because of the way FastSM strips HTML, it can only find links posted by another Mastodon server. Every other server type can post links that FastSM users can neither see 'nor interact with. Even Mastodon forks can do this. As someone effected daily by this issue, because it's completely and totally impossible for me to post links that tweesecake or FastSM users can interact with, no matter what I do, this is a huge priority for me. Only supporting logging into a Mastodon server account is one thing, and I get it. But the way FastSM is currently, you only support viewing posts by, and following, users who happen to also be on Mastodon. If you follow an account using literally anything else, links won't work. And it's impossible for a FastSM user to know they've followed an account on an unsupported server type. It's to the point where I avoid posting any links at all, because every single link I post gets multiple replies (sometimes as many as thirty or more) from blind users who do not understand that the client they use is at fault and in complete violation of the standards, not me. I'm one hundred percent following the standards as defined by the W3C and all of the Fediverse Enhancement Proposals. Clients that can't handle formatted links are broken. They need to be fixed. I've had to start just blocking Tweesecake users. I don't want to have to also do that with FastSM users.
@jdking92@Rosalyn@Bri To make all of this so, so much worse, every single fediverse server provides a plain text, non-html version of the post. Tweesecake and FastSM and others just refuse to use it. But if you look in the JSON, you'll find that while the content key contains HTML, _misskey_content and source.content both contain perfectly formatted, plain text versions of post content. FastSM and other clients just ignore them and strip HTML themselves, breaking posts and resulting in constant bitching from blind people. browser.pub/https://fed.interfree.ca/notes/ah4xrewupfr5jqja
@fastfinge@jdking92@Rosalyn@Bri Is it the clients themselves, or the Python libraries they rely on to manage Mastodon? Not that it matters for the end user, but I'm curious if this is a conscious choice the devs made, or if they just trust the libraries to work and haven't worked around the problem yet.
@alexhall@jdking92@Rosalyn@Bri And links are just the thing that blind users are noticing, because they read a post talking about a URL, try to interact with it, and it doesn't work. But I could happily post formatted lists, bold, italics, blockquotes, and both FastSM and Tweesecake would strip them out silently, and users would never know they missed anything to even complain about. I get that we don't want an HTML viewer for posts. But accessible clients need to do better than just assuming that HTML is completely unimportant and throwing it all away. They could convert the HTML to markdown. Or show the plain text version of the post that the server provides them. Or something else. But they don't. I'm sorry for ranting, but this has been making me crazy in Tweesecake for years now, and I hate that it's the same in FastSM.
@fastfinge@alexhall@jdking92@Rosalyn@Bri This might be a rant, but it is a top tier, informative one. As someone who's pointed the link issue out to you at least once, I'm sorry you're getting so much repeated grief about it and hope it gets taken more seriously in new clients.
@jscholes@fastfinge@jdking92@Rosalyn@Bri I agree with James. I didn't realize this was a problem. Now that I know, it seems like a serious oversight that should be a priority to address.
@alexhall@jscholes@fastfinge@jdking92@Rosalyn I will try to see if I can work this out, but past a certain point, there's only so much I can do. If this what you say is true, and this plaintext representation of posts is indeed available in status objects, I've yet to evger find it. I'll look into it some more, because I definitely understand where you're coming from here, never mind I think the take of outright blocking FastSM/TweeseCake users is a bit hostile, I would still like to find a solution if I can
@alexchapman@Bri@alexhall@jscholes@jdking92@Rosalyn If you reply to every single post I make complaining that the link doesn’t work, and demanding that I fix it, even when it’s your client at fault, I’m blocking. End of discussion.
@alexchapman@Bri@alexhall@jscholes@jdking92@Rosalyn Sorry, but if you’re so untitled to think that the entire world needs to avoid making standards compliant HTML formatted posts, because your client is utterly and completely broken, and you complain about it constantly, a block is all you deserve.
@Bri@alexchapman@alexhall@jscholes@jdking92@Rosalyn I’m sorry, but it completely is. I am sick and tired of being told that dealing with other people’s broken clients is my problem. And that I need to go out of my way to bend over backwards for people who have been told that they’re using an incompatible and broken client. It’s a bad look for blind people, who demand that everyone else follow W3C and WCAG standards, but then use apps that don’t do so themselves. And when I point this out, it’s my fault anyway, because I just shouldn’t use completely allowed and supported features that work literally everywhere else.
@Bri@alexchapman@alexhall@jscholes@jdking92@Rosalyn Never said you were. I was responding to Alex. But you did say fixing it isn’t a priority. And that if you can’t figure it out, you’re not going to fix it. Meaning you obviously believe that following the standards is an optional, nice to have. If you can’t figure it out, I’ll just have to deal with endless complaints from your users, and blocking them makes me the jerk.
@fastfinge@alexchapman@alexhall@jscholes@jdking92@Rosalyn I mean, the app is open source. If what I've done doesn't fix it, and you're so bothered by it, you could take a crack at fixing it yourself, rather than going off on me and others for things that we may not even know about/know how to properly fix. I'm only human, after all, I don't know everything, I can only do so much.
@Bri@alexchapman@alexhall@jscholes@jdking92@Rosalyn I offered. I even offered to make a PR, once you said what of four perspective solutions you preferred. But I never heard back. Because, as you have said repeatedly, this is not your priority.
@fastfinge@alexchapman@alexhall@jscholes Right, but then after that you continued to get repeatedly more and more frustrated/hostile without waiting from a reply from me first.
