Line breaks removed when escaping characters

[kalenpw]

Description

Line breaks are stripped out when escaping characters in a message

Steps to reproduce

• Type the following
• \> text [SHIFT ENTER] \> text 2
• post message
• New lines will be stripped from post

Describe how what happens differs from what you expected.

Expectation is line breaks are preserved

Logs being sent: no

(Left becomes right when you enter it)

Version information

• Platform: web (in-browser)

For the web app:

• Browser: Verified on Chrome and Microsoft Edge
• OS: macOS Mojave and Ubuntu 18.04
• URL: Elsewhere, version 1.7.7

For the desktop app:

I'm fairly certain this happens on Desktop version but will update here later after I confirm

• OS: Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, etc?
• Version: 1.x.y

[dbkr]

I can repro this but only by putting backslashes before, as in your screenshot, rather than without as in your repro steps, ie:

\> test
\> test

[kalenpw]

Good catch, they were stripped out of the Markdown.

I believe the issue is here: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/blob/develop/src/editor/serialize.ts#L40-L50

Would the best course of action be editing toPlainText() here? This is my first time looking at the Matrix/Element codebase so I'm not positive

[ChristianTacke]

Things are rendered correctly, if there is other (normal) markdown in the message.

\*with asterisks\* is shown *correctly*, when using formatting elsewhere.

[ShadowJonathan]

FWIW #17933 contains a little more diagnostic event info as to what could be going on. I currently think its an in-between step being triggered improperly, and all of the markdown output being thrown in formatted_body because * or such was detected in the input.