You wouldn't be addressing my statement at all. You'd have changed nothing. Any attempted solutions using formatting have no impact on this issue. That includes table colors, css classes or any other attribute you can think of. When I said the only way to get the spoiler effect would be to put it in an HTML comment I was serious.

Uh, keep reading. You missed the "if the setting is unset" section. That /will/ work for browersers that don't follow presentation attributes, of HTML or CSS varieties. In that case, the text isn't just a comment, it's simply not there -- you have to follow the link.

If you want the XML view to transform the node text from what the author wrote into a comment, then your wishes are broken, OTOH. It's the responsiblity of the client to render the node text into whatever form it wants in the XML case.

I'm really not clear on what it is you want the spoiler tag to do, I guess.

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Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

Oh I read it alright. I just didn't understand what you meant. So there'd be a toggle defaulting to formatted hidden stuff for most people and then really hidden stuff for people who don't see formatting? As for what I want, I'm of no particular opinion. Aristotle mentioned in the chatterbox that the text was hidden or some such and I just mentioned that, no, what he did is not an effective way to communicate.

It isn't as if spoilers are common here and when they are it impacts an (I assume) insignificant proportion of the users. I rather like jeffa's code block under comments idea though. If that worked less manually then it it'd be a nice feature.