Customisable "too long" post truncation length, based on number of lines AND number of characters

[naught101]

Pitch

Currently some long posts truncate, due to https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/8205

The example posted at that MR (https://share.elouworld.org/@Exagone313/195324 - 1042 chars, one per line) is truncated to 12 lines. However, there are some long-ish posts (e.g. https://mstdn.social/@Mirella_PhD/109310858624901226, which has a 21 lines and then a long image), which do not get truncated, I guess because they are under 500 characters total.

It would be good to have a user-customisable truncation length, for example:

• Truncate any post longer than 8 new lines.
• Truncate any post longer than 300 characters
• Don't show media on truncated posts

Motivation

These options would help prevent user's timelines from getting clogged up with large posts.

[trwnh]

Truncation should ideally be based on max height, not character count

[naught101]

Yes, but I think that's not possible unless you assume a text width. Although I guess it would be reasonable to assume a fairly narrow text width, like 300px.

[trwnh]

Not really, you can do it based on ex units or aspect ratio

[naught101]

For reference, I this post:

is 659 characters, 116 words, and 23 lines at about 650px. So about 28 characters per line (it's ~50 characters for the full width lines)

I think my ideal truncation strategy for something like this would be

• Estimate number of lines, maybe something like nchars / 35? This doesn't need to be too precise
• If num lines is more than 10 (customisable), truncate to 6 lines (customisable), with a "read more" link.

[trwnh]

It shouldn't be based on character count at all, because you can do things

l
i
k
e

t
h
i
s

The optimal strategy is to limit the max-height based on ex or aspect ratio

[naught101]

OK, but it needs to be both, because of line wrapping. In your example, you get 9 lines with 9 characters, but I can also get 9 lines just by writing 400ish characters, and some instances allow 1000+ characters, which can easily get you up to 30+ lines with only a few line breaks.

[trwnh]

Yes, so you apply a max-height using ex units or otherwise calculating an aspect ratio using Javascript. What matters is line height -- that's why I'm suggesting ex.

[idotj]

Giving the user the control on line-clamp could be also a solution to manage the content height:

display: -webkit-box;
overflow: hidden;
-webkit-line-clamp: 4;
-webkit-box-orient: vertical;

[nielsle]

Also compare with #20188 "Option to disable external link previews". Perhaps the collapsed version of he post could show the link without the preview.