Truncate content

[ethicalrevolution]

Is there any way we could set the max amount of characters to be displayed from the content of a post?

At present we can use [ap_excerpt length="400"] to control the length of an excerpt. Ideally I'd like to be able to do the same but with ap_content in place of ap_excerpt. This is because the excerpt strips all tags.

Most blog posts are too long for the standard character limit in Mastodon. Depending on the client/app a user is viewing from this can mean that the entire posts is hidden behind a button (see screenshot 1).

What I'd like to be able to achieve is for a longer post to truncate before the maximum Mastodon character limit so it never goes behind a button like this. When truncated a 'Read more' link to the post on the WP site would then appear. (See screenshot 2.)

Screenshot 1:

Screenshot 2:

[pfefferle]

Phew! I am not sure if it is a good idea to truncate HTML! There are so many things that could break if we would have to take care of the proper nesting of HTML, together with the correct character limits (including HTML elements).

[ethicalrevolution]

👍
In that case I need to try to imagine another way to reach the desired goal* other than truncating html.

*The goal being to not have long (standard sized) posts hidden behind buttons in certain clients.

How about having an ‘IF’ option such as:

1. If post content is short enough then display post content
2. Otherwise show post excerpt AND include a ‘read more’ button (which wouldn’t be there in option 1).

[pfefferle]

BUUUUT... we made some good progress here: https://socialwebfoundation.org/long-form-text-on-the-fediverse/

[ethicalrevolution]

Oh, nice. What’s the upshot of this? Is this a future workshop/project or has it happened/ongoing?

[pfefferle]

we work on better support for long form content in the fediverse. mastodon and threads already signaled that they are interested in supporting longer articles in the future.

[meljoann]

Is it possible for the ap_excerpt to not strip tags? That would be a good workaround if so!