31–40 of 177 posts
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 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…
> 2.5 Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML?
TL;DR: a completely different protocol creates a different space; when you're on gemini you know what is and isn't available, there's no need to think about not being tracked or not fetching MBytes of images and scripts, even if you don't display or execute them, because the protocol says no.
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…
as i understand they don't want that people start browsing supposedly gemini-only web with browsers supporting more than that is in the gemini specs. So those people will still get the dark side of the modern web.
In my view, Gemini's bare-bones text format is its killer feature. Non-technical users have been able to easily write Gemtext based on a few examples and a bit of experimentation. This gets users away from WSIWYG without forcing them to learn something as complex as HTML. And unlike Markdown, it is clearly-specified, universal, and doesn't compile to anything else.
Many people criticize Gemini for lacking this or that feature, and being basically useless for "practical" applications. I wrote an blog post about this:
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?"
> It's difficult or even impossible to deactivate support for all the unwanted features in mainstream browsers
Just do not use mainstream browsers then. Make your own like you do for gemini. They address it a bit later with:
> Writing a dumbed down web browser which gracefully ignores all the unwanted features is much harder than writing a Gemini client from scratch
And I will disagree on this part, http 1.0 is actually easier to implement than the gemini protocol.
> Even if you did it, you'd have a very difficult time discovering the minuscule fraction of websites it could render.
Except gemini browsers render even less websites right now.
It seems to me that the gemini developers can't really think outside the box. This is further proven by their dependence on things like TCP, TLS, and DNS.
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…
It's in the FAQ ( https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.htm ) > 2.5 Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML? TL;DR: a completely different protocol creates a different space; when you're on gemini you know what is and isn't available, there's no need to think about not being tracked or not fetching MBytes of images and scripts, even if you don't display or execute them, because the protocol says no.
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.
How would a user not using a screen reader know?
Gemini is fantastic. For anyone interested in experimenting with it without setting up a server, I've been working on a simple Gemini site builder that works over HTTP and serves the content via Gemini and HTTP proxy: https://flounder.online/ In my view, Gemini's bare-bones text format is its killer feature. Non-technical users have been able to easily write Gemtext based on a few examples and a bit of experimentatio…
I've been subscribed to the Gemini mailing list for a while now, and browse the conversations on it (it's very active), and I'm still yet to be convinced it's a viable alternative to the web that will gain any traction outside of it's core hobbyist user base.
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.
Gemini is fantastic. For anyone interested in experimenting with it without setting up a server, I've been working on a simple Gemini site builder that works over HTTP and serves the content via Gemini and HTTP proxy: https://flounder.online/ In my view, Gemini's bare-bones text format is its killer feature. Non-technical users have been able to easily write Gemtext based on a few examples and a bit of experimentatio…
Beyond using TLS for the connections, I struggle to understand what Gemini offers over Gopher. Gopher's document type is bare bones text also. Gopher is an open standard also. There's many clients and servers for many platforms, and it's easy to implement. I've been subscribed to the Gemini mailing list for a while now, and browse the conversations on it (it's very active), and I'm still yet to be convinced it's a vi…