gemini:// space
spwhitton.name
gemini:// space
1–10 of 177 posts
Re: gemini:// space
#2Tried using gopher back, I like frugal but it's a tad too bare.. interesting nonetheless. Ultra light for sure.
Re: gemini:// space
#3Gemini is a cool piece of simple tech. I had a genuine pleasure reading the spec: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.html
I've entertained an idea to build a set of tools for contemporary development (version control, code review, CI, etc) which would only speak Gemini. That would be both the UI and the API.
Blockers came fast:
* no way to upload anything that exceeds 1024 bytes,
* escaping is subtly broken and so it would be impossible to review code written in Python or Markdown (triple quotes)
* No text editing capabilities, pretty much.
Which is fine: Gemini is great because it's restricted. It's nearly impossible to abuse. It will find its users, even if it would not be me.
Re: gemini:// space
#4I think the idea that Gemini cannot be extended is a bit silly. Clearly it can be, it’s just not inherent in the specification that it will.
Re: gemini:// space
#5The author is 100% right about the effect of having formally designated spaces for things that you would think could happily exist as informal subspaces of a wider environment.
Cold engineering logic drove us to see that everything is just bytes and so everything can be served over HTTP.
The same logic is used in the retail world to optimize away culture and quirk and nuance and difference: everything is just a product, so everything can be sold in just one superstore.
I see the small Internet movement as not just about nostalgia (although it’s definitely a little bit about nostalgia), but about countering monoculture by prioritising things other than efficiency.
Gemini doesn’t need to be extensible because if you want to do something different, you can use a different tool and they can happily coexist, because the objective is not to achieve a winner-takes-all network effect victory.
Re: gemini:// space
#6There's a great FAQ which explains the motivation behind the project and behind the design decisions:
Re: gemini:// space
#7Gemini is a cool piece of simple tech. I had a genuine pleasure reading the spec: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.html I've entertained an idea to build a set of tools for contemporary development (version control, code review, CI, etc) which would only speak Gemini. That would be both the UI and the API. Blockers came fast: * no way to upload anything that exceeds 1024 bytes, * escaping is subtly…
The one thing that puts me off the most is the limit of two levels of headings.
(There are three, but you need one for the page title, and it would be awkward to reuse the "title" heading level for "section" headings. Even if you got over this awkwardness, three levels is still annoyingly constraining.)
Re: gemini:// space
#8Browsing via a remote session (https://gemini.circumlunar.space/clients.html) is classic. Telnetting to a machine that had a text web browser was a real thing back in the early 90s
Someone is either old or has done some serious homework (maybe both). Good job.
Note: also, since people who don't know what they're talking about occasionally seem to want to challenge me on early (pre-1996 or so) web history here's some references:
Page 500 from the 1994 "The Internet Complete Reference" by Harley Hahn: http://9ol.es/1994-internet-book.jpg (info: http://9ol.es/1994-copyright.jpg)
Page 272 from the 1993 "The Online Users Encyclopedia" by Bernard Aboba: http://9ol.es/1993-internet-book.jpg (info: http://9ol.es/1993-copyright.jpg)
Re: gemini:// space
#9I like how it removes noise for the reader. Links cannot simply be put whereever the author pleases. Links have to be put on their own line. (and the browser can neatly indicate to you which links are same-domain, other-domain, other-protocol)
Re: gemini:// space
#10Gemini is a cool piece of simple tech. I had a genuine pleasure reading the spec: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.html I've entertained an idea to build a set of tools for contemporary development (version control, code review, CI, etc) which would only speak Gemini. That would be both the UI and the API. Blockers came fast: * no way to upload anything that exceeds 1024 bytes, * escaping is subtly…
From https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.html:
> Of course, it is possible to serve Markdown over Gemini. The inclusion of a text/markdown Media type in the response header will allow more advanced clients to support it.
So not as the default markup language, but available.