The Gemini protocol seen by this HTTP client person

I first came across Gemini after making my own HTTP alternative TUI-over-the-wire protocol (uggly)[1].

Gemini has the same motives as I had when I started, but I didn't switch to it for all the same criticisms that are mentioned in the article (e.g. TOFU, no visualization support, no stream/data support, no cookies for login support, etc).

I'm really glad to see that the desire for a simpler protocol is still going strong though.

[1] - https://github.com/rendicott/uggly

> Gemini documents certainly are never visually very attractive

As a proponent of the Gemini protocol, I take issue with this line. The Gemtext format is a minimal markup format for text documents. It's a way of semantically indicating "this part is plaintext", "this part is a link", "this part is a header". Unlike HTML/CSS, it does not provide a mechanism for the author to style their documents. Instead, it is up to the client to render the text document, however the client chooses. If most clients render text in an unattractive way, that's not a fault of the format. And I mean, I don't think plaintext is ugly.

Re: URL discussion

The author interprets "URL needs be UTF-8 encoded" as meaning that any escape codes in the URL need to use UTF-8. I interpreted that as meaning that the URL string as a whole should be UTF-8 encoded. In the author's example where there's a "%C5 in the URL", I'd just encode "%", "C", and "5" according to UTF-8. Maybe it goes without saying that the URL-line doesn't use UTF-16; but I think Solderpunk included it to be clear.

Markdown is way better IMO, also very simple yet allowing for better visuals and more expressivness, and new protocol should be designed to use it as its text format.

> As a proponent of the Gemini protocol, I take issue with this line. The Gemtext format is a minimal markup format for text documents. It's a way of semantically indicating "this part is plaintext", "this part is a link", "this part is a header". Unlike HTML/CSS, it does not provide a mechanism for the author to style their documents. Instead, it is up to the client to render the text document, however the client chooses. If most clients render text in an unattractive way, that's not a fault of the format. And I mean, I don't think plaintext is ugly.

Okay? But why it isn't markdown? What does it add that markdown does not have ?

It is just taking few things from markdown but changing enough that markdown interpreter won't work. What's the point of that?. Different for sake of being different ?

I can understand say removing any support from HTML elements in markdown if you want to make something entirely new, but the changes are just entirely pointless and not make it more readable.

There appears to not even be a support for a basic table, while calling itself "rich document" format

But the cherry on cake gotta be this part of paragraph:

> You may have noticed that gemini supports links to other protocols (the above example includes a web link, beginning with `https`, and a gemini link, beginning with `gemini`).

The author is using `the markdown code/monospace font` backticks from markdown, in document describing this shitty format, where they are not implemented, out of habit of using them in markdown.

Gemtext is weird, it’s hyper-focused on a very specific form of text publishing. It’s not trying to be “old internet” featuring the creative freedom of its users, it’s just text content and that’s it. Not even inline links or images! Which I personally think makes it a bad format for the old-internet mainstay of “website about one specific interest of mine”.

I run a little capsule but I find myself with not much to do because I’m really not interested in writing long blog posts. I made a crappy HN reader over gem, it’s not very usable predictably haha

I still think HTML is the ideal creative-indy-internet format.