78 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
78 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
# MSC 2010: Proposal to add client-side spoilers
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Sometimes, while you want to put text into a spoiler to not have people accidentally read things that they don't want to see.
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For example, when discussing a new movie or a TV series, not everyone might have watched it yet.
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In such cases it would make sense to add a spoiler so that only those who have seen the movie or
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don't mind spoilers read the content.
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Another example would be e.g. in mental health communities where certain people have certain
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triggers. People could put talking about abuse or the like into a spoiler, to not accidentally
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trigger anyone just reading along the conversation.
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Furthermore this is helpful for bridging to other networks that already have a spoiler feature.
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To render the spoiler the content is hidden and then revealed once interacted somehow
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(e.g. a click / hover).
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## Proposal
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This proposal is about adding a new attribute to the `formatted_body` of messages with type
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`m.room.message` and message types which support the `org.matrix.custom.html` format.
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It adds a new attribute, `data-mx-spoiler`, to the `<span>` tag. If the attribute is present the
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contents of the span tag should be rendered as a spoiler. Optionally, you can specify a reason for
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the spoiler by setting the attribute string. It could be rendered, for example, similar to this:
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The plaintext fallback supported by the `body` is optional. A recommendation for clients is included
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below.
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To preserve the semantics of a spoiler in the plaintext fallback it is recommended to upload the contents of the spoiler
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as a text file and then link this: `[Spoiler](mxc://someserver/somefile)` and
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`[Spoiler for reason](mxc://someserver/somefile)` respectively.
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### Example
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Without reason:
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```
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{
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"msgtype": "m.text",
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"format": "org.matrix.custom.html",
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"body": "Hello there, the movie was [spoiler](mxc://someserver/somefile)",
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"formatted_body": "Hello there, the movie was <span data-mx-spoiler>awesome</span>"
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}
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```
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With reason:
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```
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{
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"msgtype": "m.text",
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"format": "org.matrix.custom.html",
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"body": "Hey [Spoiler for movie](mxc://someserver/somefile)",
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"formatted_body": "Hey <span data-mx-spoiler="movie">the movie was awesome</span>"
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}
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```
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## Tradeoffs
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Instead of making this an attribute, an entirely new tag could be introduced (e.g. `<mx-spoiler>`),
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however that wouldn't be HTML-compliant.
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Instead of limiting the proposed `data-mx-spoiler` attribute only to the `<span>`-tag it could be
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added to all tags, however it might make implementations for clients more complicated.
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Alternatively the [details](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/details) tag could
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be used. This, however, is a block element, and the spoilers are span elements. Furthermore
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semantically there is a slight difference: with the details tag you hide something for a person
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as it uses up a lot of screen space, while with a spoiler you hide something as a person might not
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want to see it.
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## Potential issues
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Depending on context it might make sense to put other events, such as `m.image`, into spoilers,
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too. This MSC doesn't address that at all. Using
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`<span data-mx-spoiler><img src="mxc://server/media"></span>` seems rather sub-optimal for that.
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This MSC doesn't take HTML block elements into account.
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Clients would have to come up with a way to input spoilers. This could be done, for example,
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by adding a custom markdown tag (like discord does), so that you do `Text ||spoiler||`, however
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that doesn't take a spoiler reason into account.
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## Security considerations
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The spoiler reason needs to be properly escaped when rendered.
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