MSC3765: Rich text in room topics

proposals/3765-rich-room-topics.md

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+# MSC3765: Rich text in room topics
+
+## Problem
+
+Topics are a central piece of room meta data and usually made easily
+accessible to room members in clients. As a result, room administrators
+often extend the use of topics to collect helpful peripheral information
+that is related to the room’s purpose. Most commonly these are links to
+external resources. At the moment, topics are limited to [plain text]
+which, depending on the number and length of URLs and other content,
+easily gets inconvenient to consume and calls for richer text formatting
+options.
+
+## Proposal
+
+Drawing from extensible events as described in [MSC1767], a new content
+block `m.topic` is defined, which wraps an `m.text` content block that
+allows representing the room topic in different mime types. In current
+room versions, this content block is added to the content of [`m.room.topic`]
+events as shown below[^1].
+
+```json5
+{
+  "type": "m.room.topic",
+  "state_key": "",
+  "content": {
+    "m.topic": {
+      "m.text": [ {
+        "mimetype": "text/html",
+        "body": "All about <b>pizza</b> | <a href=\"https://recipes.pizza.net\">Recipes</a>"
+      }, {
+        "body": "All about **pizza** | [Recipes](https://recipes.pizza.net)"
+      }]
+    },
+    "topic": "All about **pizza** | [Recipes](https://recipes.pizza.net)"
+  },
+  ...
+}
+```
+
+In line with [MSC1767], clients should render the first mime type in the
+array that they understand. Further details of how `m.text` works may
+be found in [MSC1767] and are not repeated here.
+
+The wrapping `m.topic` content block is similar to `m.caption` for file
+uploads as defined in [MSC3551]. It avoids clients accidentally rendering
+the topic as a room message. ([MSC1767] specifies that unknown events with
+an `m.text` content block should be rendered as a regular room message, and
+while [MSC1767] had explicitly excluded state events from being treated as 
+extensible, this is being changed with [MSC4252].) The extra content block, therefore, allows putting
+a fallback representation that is actually designated for the timeline
+into a separate `content['m.text']` field. In addition, the `m.topic` content
+block also serves as a good place for additional fields to be added by
+other MSCs in the future.
+
+It is recommended that clients always include a plain text variant within `m.text` when
+sending `m.room.topic` events. This prevents bad UX in situations where a plain
+text topic is sufficient such as the public rooms directory.
+
+Additionally, clients should duplicate the plain text topic into the existing
+`topic` field for backwards compatibility with clients that don't support
+`m.topic` yet. This also helps prevent inconsistencies since such clients
+are likely to delete the `m.topic` content block when updating `m.room.topic`
+themselves.
+
+In order to prevent formatting abuse in room topics, clients are
+encouraged to limit the length of topics during both entry and display,
+for instance, by capping the number of displayed lines. Additionally,
+clients should ignore things like headings and enumerations (or format them
+as regular text). A future MSC may introduce a mechanism to capture extended
+multiline details that are not suitable for room topics in a separate field
+or event type.
+
+On the server side, any logic that currently operates on the `topic` field is
+updated to use the `m.topic` content block instead:
+
+- In [`/_matrix/client/v3/createRoom`], the `topic` parameter should cause `m.room.topic`
+  to be written with a `text/plain` mimetype in `m.topic`. If at the same time an
+  `m.room.topic` event is supplied in `initial_state`, it is overwritten entirely.
+  A future MSC may generalize the `topic` parameter to allow specifying other mime
+  types without `initial_state`.
+- In [`GET /_matrix/client/v3/publicRooms`], [`GET /_matrix/federation/v1/publicRooms`]
+  and their `POST` siblings, the `topic` response field should be read from the
+  `text/plain` mimetype of `m.topic` if it exists or omitted otherwise.
+  A plain text topic is sufficient here because this data is commonly
+  only displayed to users that are *not* a member of the room yet. These
+  users don't commonly have the same need for rich room topics as users
+  who already reside in the room. A future MSC may update these endpoints
+  to support rich text topics.
+- The same logic is applied to [`/_matrix/client/v1/rooms/{roomId}/hierarchy`]
+  and [`/_matrix/federation/v1/hierarchy/{roomId}`].
+- In [server side search], the `room_events` category is expanded to search
+  over the `m.text` content block of `m.room.topic` events.
+
+## Potential issues
+
+None.
+
+## Alternatives
+
+The combination of `format` and `formatted_body` currently utilised to
+enable HTML in `m.room.message` events could be generalised to
+`m.room.topic` events. However, this would only allow for a single
+format in addition to plain text and is a weaker form of reuse than
+described in the introductory section of [MSC1767].
+
+## Security considerations
+
+Allowing HTML in room topics is subject to the same security
+considerations that apply to HTML in room messages. In particular,
+topics are already included in the content that clients should [sanitise]
+for unsafe HTML.
+
+## Unstable prefix
+
+While this MSC is not considered stable, `m.topic` should be referred to
+as `org.matrix.msc3765.topic`.
+
+[^1]: A future MSC may discuss how to adopt the `m.topic` content block in
+      new room versions which support extensible events.
+
+[plain text]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#mroomtopic
+[MSC1767]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/1767
+[MSC4252]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/4252
+[sanitise]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#security-considerations
+[server side search]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#server-side-search
+[`m.room.topic`]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#mroomtopic
+[`/_matrix/client/v1/rooms/{roomId}/hierarchy`]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#get_matrixclientv1roomsroomidhierarchy
+[`/_matrix/client/v3/createRoom`]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#post_matrixclientv3createroom
+[`/_matrix/federation/v1/hierarchy/{roomId}`]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/server-server-api/#get_matrixfederationv1hierarchyroomid
+[`GET /_matrix/client/v3/publicRooms`]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/client-server-api/#get_matrixclientv3publicrooms
+[`GET /_matrix/federation/v1/publicRooms`]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.12/server-server-api/#get_matrixfederationv1publicrooms