61–70 of 113 posts
There's no place for Gemini.
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I think you just misunderstand the point. A lot of criticism of Gemini seems to make the assumption that it's intended to replace HTTP and that it's badly thought through for that use. In fact, I think it basically came from a niche group of Gopher hobbyist users who wanted to fix a few longstanding annoyances with Gopher. They wanted something that anybody could write a client or server for as a fun little weekend p…
> In fact, I think it basically came from a niche group of Gopher hobbyist users who wanted to fix a few longstanding annoyances with Gopher. To me Gemini looks like it was made by people that fetishized the idea of Gopher after reading about without ever have actually used it. Gopher was not about reading documents, it was a way to map to resources. Those resources might be files or other servers. It was an improvem…
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Why is Creole better? To me they look much the same. Except I prefer Markdown for the looks and how widespread it is. I was a Wikipedia contributor for many years before Markdown came along, and I think Markdown has a better flavor for hyperlinks. "[link text](url)", "[link text][footnote] + [footnote]: url" are just great. I write like this even without any expectation of rendering it as anything but plaintext.
Years ago I read a well-reasoned comparison of a handful of markup languages and the author made a strong case for Creole (which I had never heard of before or since. I use markdown just like everybody else. ;) Unfortunately, I can't remember the arguments and I've never been able to find that article again. So I can't tell you why it's better. But try it and see what you think?
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Some people hate what has become of the current thing so much that they want to throw all of it away. This is that. The goal would be entirely achievable using your suggestion, but then you can't make something "simple" and "elegant". Of course don't take my cynicism to mean that people shouldn't invent new things - they totally should, that's how we move forward. Mess around all you like. I just don't see it catchin…
Gemini makes sense when you realize it's the protocol equivalent of running off to join an anarcho-primitivist commune or ascetic monastery, a technical solution to an emotional problem (disgust with the web and modern capitalist society.) It being too basic and rigid to the point of hostility towards anything but pure text is the entire point.
Even monks liked some illustrations (illumination) in their manuscripts. Gemini is closer to babylonian clay tablets delivered over TCP.
Unpopular opinion: Gemini is Gopher done wrong. There is no need for a TLS layer in a protocol that won't let you POST, and there is nothing Gemini can do that Gopher(+) could not, except that it features "some" formatting - and then again, why not just stick with HTML? There's no place for Gemini.
It is a reasonable requirement in the 2020s.
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> This means anyone still using a popular browser like Chrome can visit your sites I think this would be seen as more of a drawback than a feature. If you're trying to build a tight-knit little hobbyist community, random people popping in and complaining that "these pages are boring, where are all the images?!" isn't helpful.
Gemini doesn't support POST so no one can possibly pop in to say anything.
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I think you just misunderstand the point. A lot of criticism of Gemini seems to make the assumption that it's intended to replace HTTP and that it's badly thought through for that use. In fact, I think it basically came from a niche group of Gopher hobbyist users who wanted to fix a few longstanding annoyances with Gopher. They wanted something that anybody could write a client or server for as a fun little weekend p…
Right but if you want simple why not "just" use markdown (with maybe HTML support cut off?). Why make something subtly-similar-but-incompatble ? If you want protocol to be light and low on bandwidth, why would you not include at least the simplest of caching semantics ? It is just bad design decision after bad design decision
Unpopular opinion: Gemini is Gopher done wrong. There is no need for a TLS layer in a protocol that won't let you POST, and there is nothing Gemini can do that Gopher(+) could not, except that it features "some" formatting - and then again, why not just stick with HTML? There's no place for Gemini.
Gemtext is a hyperlink format, Gopher is plain text. And some formatting takes you a long way.
HTML cannot easily be read in TUIs and needs layout engines only billion dollar companies can maintain.
Unpopular opinion: Gemini is Gopher done wrong. There is no need for a TLS layer in a protocol that won't let you POST, and there is nothing Gemini can do that Gopher(+) could not, except that it features "some" formatting - and then again, why not just stick with HTML? There's no place for Gemini.
You don't need POST. You have queries (and many Gemini people use Titan as well).
It's not meant to replace http. Use Gemini for the things it's meant for and http for the things it does best.