Please don't render blockquotes and actions (m.emote, "/me") as cursive.

[CrimsonFork]

Describe the bug

This is (presumably) technically intended behavior, but We feel it's justified to put it as a bug anyway because it causes unintended by and possibly unknown to the sender behavior with no way for the sender to intentionally bypass it (and they shouldn't need to in the first place). We focus on blockquotes (i.e. the <blockquote> element, represented by a newline starting with > in commonmark) here, but all the same applies on a smaller scale to m.emote types of messages as well.

Forcing all blockquotes to be cursive can erase meaningful formatting, especially since it's semantically supposed to be a quotation, i.e. represent a verbatim copy of text found elsewhere, and cursive is the most commonly used type of highlight in markdown/commonmark (at least in terms of Matrix messaging). An

I am a new creature.

can be a significant difference from

I am a new creature.

but when it's all just

I am a new creature.

that emphasis gets lost. Furthermore, if it's a quote with many lines in it having long stretches of cursive text can make it harder to read, especially if the original intention is to have the monotone text be broken up by cursive segments. Also, having all quoted emojis be categorically cursive is, well, TBH, it's rather hilarious, but also still unlikely to be the intent of a sender, especially if they don't use Cinny themselves.

Reproduction

1. Send any message containing a blockquote or a /me command.

Expected behavior

Messages shouldn't be displayed as cursive when the sender didn't intend for them to be cursive, especially if there may not be any reasonable way for them to know that that's how a recipient may see it.

Platform and versions

1. OS: openSUSE Linux
2. Browser: LibreWolf 146.0-2 (Firefox fork)
3. Cinny version: 4.10.2 ( app.cinny.in )
4. Matrix homeserver: the-apothecary.club

Additional context

The fact that cursive emojis are a thing is really funny, though.

🚂🚃🚃🚃

Stationary train.

🚂🚃🚃🚃

Nyoooming train.

🚂🚃🚃🚃 🚂🚃🚃🚃

Nyoooming trains.

🚂🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️ 🚂🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

Nyoooming trains without the i.

[pkorba]

Agreed. I think there's no benefit in having cursive here. On top of what OP said, blockquotes are distinctive enough without cursive anyway by being indented and by having a grey bar on the left side. And if that's not enough, different color could be used like in Element Desktop (dark grey instead of black font).

Edit:
In the meantime, as a workaround, if you use Cinny in a browser, you can force your own CSS using browser extension like uBlock Origin – add this in uBO's "My filters" tab:

! Cinny - set blockquote's font-style to 'normal'
app.cinny.in##+js(trusted-set-attr, blockquote, style, 'font-style: normal !important;')