Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

gemini:// space

spwhitton.name

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 177 posts

Re: gemini:// space

#21

Post by microtherion »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #14
senkora wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that that complexity should be handled by the screenreader through heuristics rather than the .gemini format itself, based on the desire to keep basic clients very simple (~100 loc). But that’s a really good point!

Heuristics might work for longer text where the sample is large enough to uniquely identify the language, but for single words there is not enough information. If I write "coin" in my text, for example, am I using an English word, French word, or Irish word? The pronunciation varies drastically, and screenreaders have to know what to say.

My go to anecdote on this is when I returned to Switzerland after several years in the US and walked by a bakery displaying a sign advertising a "Pain Surprise".

If anybody ever opens an S&M themed bakery, the problem will be accentuated.

Re: gemini:// space

#22

Post by amadsen »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #14
senkora wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that that complexity should be handled by the screenreader through heuristics rather than the .gemini format itself, based on the desire to keep basic clients very simple (~100 loc). But that’s a really good point!

Heuristics might work for longer text where the sample is large enough to uniquely identify the language, but for single words there is not enough information. If I write "coin" in my text, for example, am I using an English word, French word, or Irish word? The pronunciation varies drastically, and screenreaders have to know what to say.

My vision is good and I also don't know if the word you quoted was supposed to be in English, French of Irish? The point being, a screen reader has no more or less information than a human reader.

It might be better then to invest effort in improving language inference heuristics, which would help in all applications (pdf documents, text files) than to try to build in support in each underlying protocol.

Re: gemini:// space

#23

Post by ryannevius »

Are there any other protocols that have similar aims? I love the idea of a "corner" of the web that is reminiscent of the plain markup/pre-JS days, and occasionally use w3m to get a taste of it.

Re: gemini:// space

#24

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

amadsen wrote: post #22
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heuristics might work for longer text where the sample is large enough to uniquely identify the language, but for single words there is not enough information. If I write "coin" in my text, for example, am I using an English word, French word, or Irish word? The pronunciation varies drastically, and screenreaders have to know what to say.

My vision is good and I also don't know if the word you quoted was supposed to be in English, French of Irish? The point being, a screen reader has no more or less information than a human reader. It might be better then to invest effort in improving language inference heuristics, which would help in all applications (pdf documents, text files) than to try to build in support in each underlying protocol.

PDF actually has support for language tagging, and using it is a recommended part of any guide to accessibility for the visually impaired.

It may be that the language which a quoted foreign-language word is meant to read in was mentioned far back in the text. Human sighted readers will know how to read it, but computers won't yet (and perhaps won't for many years if not decades). However, there are visually impaired people now who need to be guaranteed the same Gemini experience as sighted users.

Re: gemini:// space

#25

Post by h_anna_h »

I don't understand why the gemini people don't just use http 1.0 (+ host) with html (or plaintext/markdown/whatever even, without js/css). Seems like a case of NIH to me. Don't get me wrong, I am not against "reinventing the wheel" for a toy project or to learn but gemini seems to have become more popular than just that. If someone is really tired of the modern web I would suggest to them a distributed alternative rather than this.

Re: gemini:// space

#26

Post by wwn_se »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #14
senkora wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that that complexity should be handled by the screenreader through heuristics rather than the .gemini format itself, based on the desire to keep basic clients very simple (~100 loc). But that’s a really good point!

Heuristics might work for longer text where the sample is large enough to uniquely identify the language, but for single words there is not enough information. If I write "coin" in my text, for example, am I using an English word, French word, or Irish word? The pronunciation varies drastically, and screenreaders have to know what to say.

How would a user not using a screen reader know?

Re: gemini:// space

#27

Post by prepperdev »

h_anna_h wrote: post #25

I don't understand why the gemini people don't just use http 1.0 (+ host) with html (or plaintext/markdown/whatever even, without js/css). Seems like a case of NIH to me. Don't get me wrong, I am not against "reinventing the wheel" for a toy project or to learn but gemini seems to have become more popular than just that. If someone is really tired of the modern web I would suggest to them a distributed alternative ra…

This is covered by their FAQ: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.html, Section 2.5 "Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML?"

Re: gemini:// space

#28

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

senkora wrote: post #13
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #12

I really like the idea of having a more bare-bones text-only web, but I can't get onboard with Gemini until it offers the same support for screenreaders as HTML. (For example, an equivalent of span lang=XX tags is missing, so if you quote a foreign-language word(s) in your text, you can't let screenreaders know what language to read it in). The visually impaired should not be second-class citizens in any new internet…

I would argue that that complexity should be handled by the screenreader through heuristics rather than the .gemini format itself, based on the desire to keep basic clients very simple (~100 loc). But that’s a really good point!

Not having the ability to do this forces the screenreader to solve the problem, and it's a really hard problem in general - something like "real" that already exists in English but crops up in Spanish contexts fairly frequently is tough, let alone all the proper nouns etc.

On the other hand, there will also be a bunch of cases where people don't do the work to mark this up (maybe not even realising they need to)...

Re: gemini:// space

#29

Post by wwn_se »

h_anna_h wrote: post #25

I don't understand why the gemini people don't just use http 1.0 (+ host) with html (or plaintext/markdown/whatever even, without js/css). Seems like a case of NIH to me. Don't get me wrong, I am not against "reinventing the wheel" for a toy project or to learn but gemini seems to have become more popular than just that. If someone is really tired of the modern web I would suggest to them a distributed alternative ra…

Yeah markdown only sites would be great!

But the only way to have some success with a old-new web is widespread adoption.

I try to host and share trough my own blogs/sites to not put everything on the giants. But if 99% does not we will still be were we are.

Re: gemini:// space

#30

Post by bandie91 »

Ambolia wrote: post #17

Really nice project, seems like some keys to open up the internet again would be: - Decoupling of data (articles, videos, ...) from platforms. - Decoupling authorship claims from platforms - Decoupling online identities from platforms. - Decoupling of user networks from platforms. - Distributed archiving, some years ago if you had an article/manifesto or whatever on Napster or any other P2P system it was trivial to f…

i strongly agree with these points.

let me add some more:

- decouple documents from the transport layer: many web vulnerabilities and complexity are due to the strong connection between http and html

- decouple documents from styling: every document should be legible with any stylsheet (bring back 'userstyle'), cut back css features which lead to nasty things like keylogging via css, transparenting elements for clickjacking, hide text to manipulate clipboard, etc.

Post reply on HN