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Six Years of Gemini

geminiprotocol.net

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Re: Six Years of Gemini

#61

Post by fallat »

uamgeoalsk wrote: post #32
rcarmo wrote: post #26

I wrote a server for it a while back (am still running it someplace behind a CF tunnel) but I’ve never really found either the community or the protocol were taking off: https://github.com/rcarmo/aiogemini A key issue with the ecosystem (not the protocol) as far as I’m concerned is that it would have been stupendously better to settle on Markdown (even a simplified form) for content creation. The rest is OK, I guess,…

Being able to parse gemtext line by line with almost no context is a big win for simplicity - you can't really do that with markdown.

Uh, how much simplicity do you really gain? What's an instance of needing to backtrack?

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#62

Post by Avshalom »

uamgeoalsk wrote: post #32
rcarmo wrote: post #26

I wrote a server for it a while back (am still running it someplace behind a CF tunnel) but I’ve never really found either the community or the protocol were taking off: https://github.com/rcarmo/aiogemini A key issue with the ecosystem (not the protocol) as far as I’m concerned is that it would have been stupendously better to settle on Markdown (even a simplified form) for content creation. The rest is OK, I guess,…

Being able to parse gemtext line by line with almost no context is a big win for simplicity - you can't really do that with markdown.

It's not like by line but djot was designed to be parsed easier/more efficiently than markdown while being basically as featureful and ergonomic.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#63

Post by vascocosta »

As an early adopter and developer of a couple of service oriented capsules, as time went by my interest faded completely. I'm a strong advocate of live and let live, so this is not a critique or discouragement post, but rather my own perspective.

Like many have mentioned already, I personally would have preferred pure markdown and no gemtext at all. Similarly, and although I understand the reasoning behind making encryption mandatory, I believe it should be optional in the spirit of KISS. I'm more of a minimalist than I am a privacy evangelist. In this regard, I felt a bit out of place within the gemini community.

Finally, the argument that it takes a new protocol to avoid a broken user experience, often exemplified by someone jumping from a simple and well behaved HTTP website into a chaotic one, doesn't resonate much with me. Again, I get it, but I can live with visiting only the websites or gopherholes I want. This comes with a great advantage. Even if we consider just the minimalist and well designed websites, this means hoards of content when compared to all gemini capsules. I missed a broader set of topics when I used gemini and ultimately that was what killed my interest.

All that said, I loved it while I used it and I stumbled upon some really nice people. Maybe I'll fall in love again one day...

gluon

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#64

Post by fiverz »

shakna wrote: post #46
rglullis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem: you are looking for a way to get rid of the annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution that solves this with the least amount of work? A) Develop a whole new transport protocol that does less than HTTP, develop client applications that use this protocol, convince a sufficient number of people to use this protocol, at least to the point where the majority of your activity happens there? or B) Ins…

Considering "B" is becoming less possible, thanks to Google dropping Manifest 2, and going out of their way to enforce a lot more tracking, "A" looks like a lot less effort - you don't have to fight FAANG.

It's not FAANG anymore, it's GAYMMAN now

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#65

Post by shakna »

rglullis wrote: post #54
shakna wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering "B" is becoming less possible, thanks to Google dropping Manifest 2, and going out of their way to enforce a lot more tracking, "A" looks like a lot less effort - you don't have to fight FAANG.

Chrome is not the only browser out there. Firefox is still a good browser. If you depend on Chromium: Brave is keeping Manifest v2 and their ad-blocking extensions work out of the box.

And HTTP is not the only protocol out there. Plenty of others exist. Like Gemini, that has multiple browser implementations.

What's your point, exactly?

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#66

Post by anthk »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #6
monkeywork wrote: post #2

Gemini is one of those things I see pop up and tell myself I should look into it more and then it fades into the back of my mind. Anyone have any hints on getting more use out of it or ways to make it more present in my day to day.

NewsWaffle gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/ takes a url to a regular webpage and spits out a gemtext version that is much more sparse and, for me, is much more readable. For example, here's this very website: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/feed?https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Frss it's honestly the only reason I still use gemini since the rest of it is abandoned gemlogs, rehosts of web content I don't…

There are far more gopher phlogs than gemini gemlogs.

Still, both communities overlap of course.

Setting up a gopher phlog requires no TLS at all and any machine from 1980 (even maybe ITS with a Gopher client written in MacLisp) will be able to read it with no issues.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#67

Post by rglullis »

shakna wrote: post #65
rglullis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is not the only browser out there. Firefox is still a good browser. If you depend on Chromium: Brave is keeping Manifest v2 and their ad-blocking extensions work out of the box.

And HTTP is not the only protocol out there. Plenty of others exist. Like Gemini, that has multiple browser implementations. What's your point, exactly?

My point is that the choice of protocol (much like the browser) is not a relevant factor if your goal is to be able to participate in the www without dealing with the issues.

We can have all the upside of an http-based web, without dealing with the downsides. The converse is not true. A Gemini network is by design limited in functionality, which is a downside that can not be mitigated.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#68

Post by anthk »

snvzz wrote: post #35

This is just somebody's "finished" pet protocol (author did not allow anybody to give input). Narcissism we should not enable. I will stick to gopher, as it is mature and much friendlier to low spec / retro machines.

Gopher user there from texto-plano (and seldomly, SDF).

Gopher often sucks for 40x25 devices or mobile ones. Yes, word wrapping, but everyone uses the 72 char limit or even doesn't give a heck and I have to set my own $PAGER calling fmt, fold or par before less.

On TLS, you are right. But I've got to build BearSSL and some libreSSL for for Damn Small Linux. The 2.4 kernel one, were ALSA was a novely and DMIX was hard to set, the one you got with Debian Woody... with the bf24 at the LILO prompt.

So, if DSL can run some BearSSL based OpenSSL-lite client, a gemini client for it should be totally doable.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#69

Post by rglullis »

bayindirh wrote: post #58
rglullis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead you have to change the game and play with your own rules. That only works if you can convince the a substantial part of the participants to also play your game. It's very easy to create an alternative internet where we can take away the power from incumbents. The hard part is creating all the activity that is taking place in the current one. "Oh, but I can mirror the parts I want from the current internet i…

Who says I'm trying to pull in everyone from the old internet to the new internet (Gemini)? If the people I care comes along, that's enough for me, and it's up to them. For example, I switched to Mastodon, and follow people who I really want to follow are already there, plus I met a ton of interesting people, and was able to see real forms of people I followed before, so I have updated my views on them. > "Oh, but I…

> For example, I switched to Mastodon (...) and was able to see real forms of people I followed before, so I have updated my views on them.

Isn't that strong evidence that it is possible to have a "human-scale" web built on HTTP, and consequently that there is not much benefit in restricting yourself to a protocol that is designed to be limited?

> Personally, I see Gemini or other protocols as equals to HTTP/S

Except they are not. Maybe it can do enough of the things that you care about, but Gemini is (by design!) meant to do less than HTTP.

> publishing to Gemini is not different than having a RSS feed in my case.

Again: if all you want is to be able to publish something in a simple format, then why should we care about the transport protocol?

I get the whole "the medium is the message" idea, I really do. I get that people want a simpler web and I look forward to a time where we have applications developed at a more "human scale". But I really don't get why we would have to deliberately be stripping ourselves of so much power and potential. Talking about Gemini as the best solution to the problems of the modern web is like saying we should wear chastity belts to deal with teenage pregnancies.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#70

Post by CJefferson »

mattkevan wrote: post #22
sneak wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP to do what it does, but better. The modern web is opt-in. I build and use sites that aren’t SPAs and shitted up with 3p resources and images and code. HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get that they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but it isn’t HTTP’s fault. It’s the sites you visit. If you want to build new and smaller commun…

I’ve been exploring this problem for a while, and have been building something which I think might help solve it. I’m currently building a browser-based static site generator that produces clean, simple code. But it does more than that. Alongside the generated HTML, sites also publish their public configuration and source files, meaning they can be viewed in more than just a browser, for example in a CLI or accessibi…

In terms of levels of current support, you would be hard-pressed to find anything better for accessibility than simple, well-formed HTML. It's better even than plain text.
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