Incorporate "auto-cut entries over N characters on my reading page" in S2

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Incorporate "auto-cut entries over N characters on my reading page" in S2

Area:
styles, usability, reader-centric reading page

Summary:
exor674 made a nifty thing for personal use that other people might like too. The "auto-cut entries over N visible characters on my reading page" feature should be adopted as an option for all styles!

Description:
This would be an option aimed at users who do not want to have long entries displayed on their reading page, and pretty much invisible to other users, including people who write long entries.

This feature has already been created for exor674's personal use, so it would likely be of negligible development time to implement for all users who want it.

This feature operates on the display of a user's reading page, detecting entries that have more than a certain number (in exor674's implementation, it is more than 4500) of visible (outside of a cut) characters. (An uncut entry of 4501 characters would be affected; an entry of 100,000 total characters with 4500 or fewer characters outside the cut would be displayed normally.) Once it has detected a large entry, instead of displaying the entry as written by the author, it displays it as ( Entry auto-cut, over 4500 characters ) on the reader's reading page only. (It does not edit the actual entry, nor alter the display on the creator's journal or the reading pages of other users.) This happens before the page is delivered to the browser, making it more suitable for mobile devices.

Poll #2671 Incorporate "auto-cut entries over N characters on my reading page" in S2

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
40 (70.2%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (7.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (3.5%)

(I have no opinion)
11 (19.3%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ratcreature]

What does this do with the cut tag text of a cut article that is longer than 4500 characters outside the cut? Is that still displayed somewhere?

[azurelunatic]

It is not displayed on the reading page in question. One would have to go to the source journal (on a day view if necessary) or view the entry in ?nohtml=1, or (temporarily?) disable the feature in the style to see it. The cut text is similarly not visible if someone's using the existing feature to turn off cuts on their reading page.

You can see how it treats an entry with multiple cuts and more than 4500 characters outside the cut in action temporarily here, until it scrolls off the page: http://exor674.dreamwidth.org/read#entry-6389107

[msilverstar]

That's a good point about the cut. I would be happy with any number of cut tags also visible, because I do see posts that are both monstrously long *and* have cuts.

[jadelennox]

This is implemented solely in styles, right? So wouldn't affect, say, cross posts? In which case I support it.

[azurelunatic]

Solely in styles. The actual entry of the person with the long entry is never modified, either on DW or crossposted elsewhere.

[aedifica]

I would especially like it if there were some way a person could choose to have this in effect on their small-screened mobile unit but not have it in effect on their larger-screened computer(s).

[zvi]

I would like this suggestion better if it showed the first 4500 characters (although perhaps cutting off at the null space closest before the 4500 mark, instead of cutting off in the middle of words.)

[instantramen]

+1

[denise]

That is nearly impossible to do -- despite the CSS cleaner, there's no good way to keep track of what layout-destroying tags are open. A cut in the middle of a table would be bad, bad, bad.

[zvi]

Could you do the first 4500 characters or before the first non-<p> tag, whichever came first?

[mskala]

It is traditional that every time this kind of suggestion comes up in the other place, someone tells the suggester to just ask all their friends, and everyone who ever joins any community, nicely to use cut tags. That is, of course, absurd. One reason you can't just ask everyone to use cut tags is that postings coming in from RSS feeds are not under your control; another is that people posting items visible on your reading page are not necessarily your friends, and even your friends won't necessarily agree with you in all cases on when is or isn't a good time to use a cut tag.

I'm in favour of the suggestion. I implemented it by hand in a personal style in the other place.

Maybe we can have another round of the "Per-entry remove this from my reading page feature" discussion now?

[azurelunatic]

dreamatdrew says that he's reluctant to have mobile features that aren't also available for the main site, so if this is not accepted for the main site, he would not be comfortable creating this for mobile.