Jupiter Rowland wrote the following post Sat, 23 Mar 2024 10:38:15 +0100 Feature request: Multiple Article/Note switches for Pubcrawl
I've opened
a new issue in the Hubzilla add-ons repository with a feature request for more than the one Article/Note switch which was introduced with Hubzilla 9.
Here's the text:
Hubzilla 9 has changed how Pubcrawl works: By default, everything goes out as an Article-type object now. A switch can restore the old behaviour, namely everything going out as a Note-type object.
Now, Mastodon handles Note-type objects like native toots. But when it receives an Article-type object, it does not show its content at all. Instead, it shows the title, then the summary, then a link to the original, finally the hashtags. This is by design, fully intentional and absolutely justified; it shall prevent massive blog posts from appearing in Mastodon users' timelines at full length.
But this behaviour does not work well with comments from Hubzilla. Comments can neither have a title nor a summary, and frankly, they shouldn't because they're comments, so they only appear as links with nothing describing or announcing them. Likewise, it doesn't make sense for them to only appear as links on Mastodon, even less when they're comments on Mastodon toots.
The only alternative currently is to switch
everything back to being Note-type objects. But to be honest, long, blog-style posts work
much better and cause
much less trouble on Mastodon as Article-type objects that are only announced as links.
- No overly long posts in Mastodon timelines
- Mastodon users can read the posts in their original formatting, not mangled by Mastodon's inability to render embedded images
- Mastodon users aren't immediately exposed to sensitive images because they won't see the images at all until they open the post, and the title or the summary can warn them and everyone else about these sensitive images
Currently, the only way to have the best of both worlds is to always have the Pubcrawl settings page open and flick that Article/Note switch back and forth. This is rather inconvenient.
Thus, my suggestion is to turn this
one switch into
four switches:
- Posts/DMs with a title _(includes posts with a summary; Article-type by default)_
- Posts/DMs with a summary _(Note-type by default)_
- Posts/DMs with neither a title nor a summary (Note-type by default)
- Comments (Note-type by default)
The default settings would make Hubzilla mimick Friendica's behaviour: Friendica always sends everything as an Article-type object if it has a title and as a Note-type object if it doesn't have a title.
#
Pubcrawl #
FeatureRequest #
Hubzilla 9 
Stuart Bain 
