Updated! Updates are shown in quote text like this. Some scores are updated following app updates.
An Apps Experiment
Cross-posted from https://lemmy.world/post/18159531
Introduction
This is an experiment I performed out of curiosity, and I have a few big disclaimers at the bottom. Basically, I've seen a lot of comments recently about one app or another not displaying something right. Lemmy has been around for a while now and can no longer be considered an experimental platform.
Lemmy and the apps that people use to access the platform have become an important part of people’s lives. Whether you are checking the app weekly or daily, and whether you use it to stay up on the news or to stay connected to your hobby, it’s important that it works. I hope that this helps people to see the extent of the challenge, and encourages developers to improve their apps, too.
How I did it
I wanted to investigate objectively how accurately each app displays text of posts and comments using the standard Lemmy markdown. Markdown is a standard part of the Lemmy platform, but not all apps handle it the same. It is basically what gives text useful formatting.
I used the latest release of each app, but did not include pre-releases. I only included apps that have released an update in the last 6 months, which should include most apps in active development. ~~I was unable to test iOS-exclusive apps, so they are not included either. In all, 16 apps met the inclusion criteria.~~
I also added Eternity, which is in active development, although it has not had a recent update. I was able to include several iOS apps thanks to testing from @jordanlund@lemmy.world – Thanks, Jordan! This made for 20 apps that were tested.
Each app was rated in 5 categories: Text, Format, Spoilers, Links, and Images. I chose these mostly based on the wonderful Markdown Guide from @marvin@sffa.community, which was posted about a year ago in !meta@sffa.community (here).
I checked whether each app correctly displayed each category, then took the overall average. Each category was weighted equally. Text includes italic, bold, strong, strikethrough, superscript, and subscript. Format includes block quotes, lists, code (block and inline), tables, and dividers. Spoilers includes display of hidden, expandable spoilers. Links includes external links, username links, and community links. Images included embedded images, image references, and inline images.
Thanks to input from others, I also added a test to see if lemmy hyperlinks opened in-app. There was a problem with using the SFFA Community Guide that caused some apps to be essentially penalized twice because there was formatting inside formatting, so I created this TEST POST to more clearly and fairly measure each app.
In each case, I checked whether the display was correct based on the rules for Lemmy Markdown, and consistent with the author’s intent. In cases where the app recognized the tag correctly but did not display it accurately, that was treated as a fail.
Results
Out of a possible perfect 10, 6 apps displayed all markdown correctly:
Alexandrite - 10.0
Connect - 10.0
Jerboa (Official Android client) - 10.0
Photon - 10.0
Summit - 10.0
Voyager - 10.0
Quiblr - 9.5
Arctic - 9.3
Interstellar - 9.1
Lemmuy-UI - 9.0
Thunder - 8.9
Tesseract - 8.6
mlmym - 8.0
Racoon - 7.6
Boost - 7.3
Eternity - 7.0
Lemmios - 6.9
Sync - 6.9
Lemmynade - 6.1
Avelon - 5.7
Disclaimers
Disclaimers
I Love Lemmy Apps (and their devs)
Lemmy apps devs work very hard, and invest a lot in the platform. Lemmy is better because they are doing the work that they do. Like, a LOT better. Everyone who uses the platform has to access it through one app or another. Apps are the face of the entire platform. Whether an app is a FOSS passion project, underwritten by a grant, or generating income through sales or ads, no one is getting rich by making their app. It is for the benefit of the community.
This is not meant to be a rating of the quality or functionality of any app. An app may have a high rating here but be missing other features that users want, or users may love an app that has a lower rating. This is just about how well apps handle markdown.
This is pretty unscientific
You’ll see my methodology above. I’m not a scientist. There is probably a much better way to do this, and I probably have biases in terms of how I went about it. I think it’s interesting and probably has some valuable information. If you think it’s interesting, let me know. If you think of a better way, PM me and I’d be happy to share what I have so you don’t have to start from scratch.
My only goal is to help the community
I do think that accurately displaying markdown should be a standard expectation of a finished app. I hope that devs use this as an opportunity to shore up the areas that are lagging, and that they have a set of standards to aim for.
~~I don’t have any Apple things~~
~~Sorry. This is just Android and Web review. If someone would like to see how iOS apps are doing, please reach out and I’ll share how we can work together to include them.~~
Same here, switched from Eternity to Raccoon. Maybe Raccoon's @DieguiTux8623@feddit.it can help with better markdown support.
We were working on this but it's a hard task and Compose Multiplatform is still not mature as a technology, there are few libraries and those which exist do not work well.
Help would be welcome, otherwise people can use Jerboa or Voyager, nobody is forcing anybody to use any app (especially if they are FOSS).
I can imagine it's a hard task. I read from OP's post that most apps struggle with it, so it must be hard.
Sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that. Just wanted to ping you. I would gladly help, but sadly I lack the skills to do so.
Don't worry @squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de you have been one of the ones who helped the most and I am glad we had the opportunity to collaborate. I don't appreciate the original poster though, because it only gave general hints of what has been tested but no evidence about the tests. I know that some features (like subscripts, superscripts, strikethrough, tables, footnotes) are not supported BUT the perfect Markdown rendering has never been a priority for me.
I'm also using Raccoon as my daily driver. It does most things very well.
The app has a very small user base of approximately a hundred people worldwide and I know almost all of them one by one, but I've never heard of you. I'm glad to meet you, even in these unfortunate circumstances.
By the way I am considering closing the project, because I am being personally damaged by what is happening now, and my reputation as a professional has been compromised.
I certainly hope not! That was the opposite of my intent. I really hope that I laid out the intent and why I believe this kind of discussion was warranted. This is not a challenge that is limited to just one app, but is an area the entire ecosystem is lacking. This was never intended to be a review or overall critique of any apps - this is just one aspect of what apps can (and I believe, should) do.
I will be posting an update with more details to see the specific results.