Sync doesn't properly support Lemmy style markdown.
Sync doesn't properly support Lemmy style markdown.
This was a comment I made on a "sink" post the mods deleted, and I think it's an issue that needs addressing, so I'm pasting it here. The comment I replied to said something like "Superscript and spoilers have always worked fine in Sync".
Ironically, that isn't valid Lemmy markdown. Sync should be supporting Lemmy markdown, not Reddit markdown. Here's what your comment looks like on the website:
This issuperscript and you can also dosubscript.
Source:
This is^superscript^ and you can also do~subscript~.
Here's what it should look like:
Instead, you get this:
Personally I don't like Lemmy's syntax for spoilers, but Sync should still support it!
hidden or nsfw stuff
a bunch of spoilers here
Source:
::: spoiler hidden or nsfw stuff
a bunch of spoilers here
:::
I'm surprised that actually even works in Sync. It didn't used to. However, Sync doesn't show my code block accurately, which is funny as fuck! No app should be editing my code block. Sync is replacing my text with reddit markdown in order for it to display properly. And even when I put that markdown in a code block, it still converts it to reddit style! It also strips out the warning text!
Here is what I actually typed:
And here's what Sync shows:
What a lazy ass way of doing it. It removes an important feature: the warning text, and won't even let me show Sync users how to do a proper spoiler!
Oh, WTF. Sync butchered my comment when editing it! I had to fix it back on desktop.
Sync is not fine. It's full of bugs that the dev is ignoring.
Good thing it doesn't cost money, or everyone would have warned people a long time ago.
... Oh
Isn't it abandoned by now? I've switched to Thunder which is awesome and open source and I don't have to worry about such shenanigans.
It's only been 3 months since his last update, he did the same with his Reddit version, it'll get no updates for ages then all of a sudden he'll be back with the 10 new features along with big fixes out of nowhere. Hopefully that's what's happening here.
I'm commenting from Thunder now. It's significantly improved since I last used it! I'll have to give it a chance.
I'm going to mess with some markdown...
superscriptNormalsubscript
Reddit style^superscript
Damn, those don't work at all.
Ah, a nice, fat horizontal rule. Excellent! EDIT: ironically, after submitting the comment, I couldn't see it because the comment highlight background is the same color as the horizontal rule. I originally was looking at the preview. This is what I get as soon as I submit:
Warning! Spoiler!
Just kidding. There's no spoiler.
Nice! It's a shame there's no toolbar button to make a spoiler, though.
! Reddit style spoiler !<
Doesnt work, as expected. Sync makes these work, which it shouldn't
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5
Heading 6
4 through 6 all look the same. I wish apps would decorate the headings to make them obvious and not just vary the font size.
Oh shit, it even has comment drafts! I just hit Back by accident and thought I lost everything. Still, a warning or confirmation would be nice. Plus the option to just discard the comment.
- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3
Nice! You can bullet a whole list in one click. Even Sync can't do that.
Image upload works fine.
Multiline
Quotes
Work?
Yes! With one tap! Another thing Sync sucked at.
I'll have to try Thunder out some more. So far it's pretty good.
Testing...
......
Basically, yes. No word from the Dev in 4 months.
I tried Thunder several months ago, and it was... not good. I'll try it again, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
Coincidentally, someone in some other post said, "Voyager is better than Sync" so I gave it a real try. It sucks in comparison to Sync. It doesn't support Lemmy spoilers in any way, nor horizontal rules, and has a dozen other shortcomings. Some major.
Even with the bugs, Sync is still a great app with a ton of killer features.
Hi, Voyager dev here. Other than spoilers/horizontal rules, please let me know what shortcomings you encounter. I can only fix what issues I know about. Voyager is open source and bugs are tracked here: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager cheers!
Basically, yes. No word from the Dev in 4 months.
That's a very familiar pattern (I was using sync back on Reddit). It's been like this for a long while.
I posted that I liked voyager, though it's missing some features that are in sync (most importantly to me, being able to block community without visiting it) may have been me I guess?
I don't care for the formatting stuff, I rarely post, but thunder has the above mentioned so that's nice. What I instantly hated about thunder after trying it just now was that I can't scroll back up a feed without it jumping posts in a weird way. Not entirely sure what the problem is but it's very distracting.
I'll try put thunder for a bit, guess I'll just need to show funny stuff to my wife as soon as I see it rather than trying to scroll back up to it, until I can figure out why it's doing it or it gets resolved with an update.
Edit: well that's bizarre, just opened thunder again after posting this from voyager and I'm not getting the scroll backup issue.
Text formatting seems like a simple thing to fix, but it actually take a lot of effort to implement well.
The thing about markdown library is every library supports slightly different markdown features. Lemmy uses markdown-it plus several extension (e.g. superscript and lowerscript, emoji, footnote, bidirectional text), which boasts 100% compatibility with the specs. Not sure what Sync uses, but as a native android app, it probably can't use
markdown-itand has to use one of many java/android markdown library, and none of them seems to claim 100% compatibility with the specs. I suspect other native android lemmy clients also have this problem. Even jerboa (made by a lemmy dev) is not immune to this problem too, simply because it uses a different markdown library (Markwon) that behaves differently thanmarkdown-it.Boost is like Sync but better. Yes I know a lot of people will disagree but you can't disagree that maintained is better than not maintained. And the damned thing costs $3 I think it was.
Has similar issues with formatting though.
Has a chance of getting fixed before randomly 6 months from now