5 ms·

Why not just set up a site that only allows markdown with plain pages and get all the benefits you list without a new protocol?

ivanstojic 6y ago
That's actually covered in the deeper linked docs on Gemini. Setting it up on a separate protocol / markup allows you to make hard reasoning about what kind of privacy, features and protection you get as a user, rather than relying on the goodwill or current promises of your content provider.
- echelon 6y ago
  This won't get traction. It'd be better to declare a new doctype and use a reduced html. Just make it simple and make ads and JS bloat impossible. Enforcing ssl is kind of silly since browsers are starting to do that anyway independent of this. It's orthogonal.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    It’s not meant to “get traction” in the Silicon Valley sense of “everyone must use this or there is DOOM”, it’s meant to be useful for the communities that use it. If you open the Gemini link posted below about why just defining a new doctype wouldn’t work, give it a read.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      >It’s not meant to “get traction” in the Silicon Valley sense of “everyone must use this or there is DOOM”, it’s meant to be useful for the communities that use it. If you're building a protocol that enforces certain strict standards, like in this case being text only because the internet is 'bloated' according to the author, then the only point of having it is adoption beyond your community. If all you want to do is communicate with ardent non-bloat advocates you can already do this on the regular internet, because everyone in that community does it voluntarily already There's no point in codyfing standards for a community that follows your standards to begin with
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        Attracting people who agree with your community's standards to join your community, while hinting that maybe other people might not be interested, is perfectly reasonable. That's... pretty much how communities work.
        Barrin92 6y ago
        yes but you don't need a disinct technical foundation that is incompatible with your surroundings. If you want to go play at the chess club you can simply go there and everyone is interested in chess, you don't need to start a new chess players only micro-nation that keeps all the other people out, in the middle of the forest where bloated cars can't get to. That'd be pretty unecessary. In fact if you want to attract new people, that's a really bad idea
        vertex-four 6y ago
        Solderpunk has explained the issues with specifying a safe subset of HTML, the article has been linked elsewhere in this thread. If you don't want to use a Gemini browser to access it, you can use this link: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/why-not-just-use-a-subset-of-http-and-html.gmi https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users... This would seem to be a similar sort of issue to when people say "come chat on IRC", or use a mailing list to communicate about a project, or whatever else - you're not going to use those if all you ever want to use is a web browser. And that's ok in my book. I'll hang out with the people who do want to use those tools.
        dsr_ 6y ago
        Except, of course, that there are IRC clients accessed through browsers, mail through browsers, Usenet through browsers... so you don't actually exclude people that way. If Gemini catches on, someone will write an add-on for Firefox that reads it. And then it's just part of the Web that is fast and looks a little different. And that link is a long-winded way of saying "It's good to put an artificial barrier in the way."
    - oscargrouch 6y ago
      If think what the parent is trying to say is; if this protocol is a subset of of we have today with HTTP and HTML, why not to create more of a political movement cheering for this subset to be use, the same way Google does with AMP? On the technical side of things, it looks like its an old battle replayed with older weapons, just to get go through the same path of HTML. "Oh, but we will not put more features". Ok, but people wont use it then because they can also serve text, markdown, etc... and can chill out, because they know if later they need to serve images, videos or graphics, they can do it with HTML. And i say this as a person who is also trying to create some alternatives to the web. But instead of going back to the nineties, i tried to think how the technology of 10 years ahead would look like. I've probably not maded it because its really hard to push the envelop when things are almost in the state of the art as Web is. But i also don't think the answer for the future will be in the past. You know what i think would be a really badass movement. To create a simple spec of the Web, even without Javascript. Because with "feature creep" Google through Chrome is making impossible for others players to create competing browser engines. So if two folks decide that they will create a web engine in this new language they like, it wont be an impossible goal. Because there's this simple version of the spec, with much less features. The people behind this might be very good at convincing people and real believers, this thing can float for some time working real hard for this.. But it will be really hard to get this out of a small niche. Anyway i love the thinking behind this. The meditation, the koan, is really on the right track. We need more rebels and fighters on this front. But i just can see it, how this can compete as a subset of a massively popular and deployed protocol with clients everywhere? How can it really differentiate itself, apart from what the web today already can serve to people?
      - vertex-four 6y ago
        The problem is that then you link to https://yourfriendsblog.org https://yourfriendsblog.org, and a couple years down the line your friend decides this safe subset is too restricting for them and decides to replace their blog with Wordpress with all the plugins and Cloudflare captchas and Google Analytics and evercookies and whatever else. The reader is dumped, unceremoniously, back into the big bad web, but could never know this before clicking the link. When you link to a Gemini URL, you're linking to something you know can't be replaced with something privacy-violating in the future. The worst that can happen is the server shuts down, which is a very different failure mode. And someone is less likely to do that than to switch to a different brand of HTML - or so's the hope. It's not going to be a major thing that everyone uses. That's ok! Neither is IRC, mailing lists, and whatever else - but people still use them, every day. There's ideas exchanged, friendships made, relationships formed, and they serve a not-insignificant community's needs.
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    It would be a really good way to accelerate mobile pages, so I think HN might hate it.
DC-3 6y ago
Gemini's creator solderpunk wrote about this here [1]. [1] gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/why-not-just-use-a-subset-of-http-and-html.gmi
- corobo 6y ago
  I’m sure that would be an interesting read, is it available on a usable protocol?
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    You can read it with a Gemini browser, along with a lot of other content! There's a list of clients at https://gemini.circumlunar.space/clients.html https://gemini.circumlunar.space/clients.html, along with SSH and HTTP bridges.
    - corobo 6y ago
      Aha nice one! I’m still not sold on it (you’re allowed to do websites without js/css!), but the effort and skill involved is commendable
      - cjallen88 6y ago
        True, but before you visit that website, you don't know anything about how the site was implemented, or what JS is going to run, or whethere there will be a big autoplay video advert, etc. When you visit a gemini URL, you know how it's going to serve you a limited capability, text based document, styled according to your own rules.
  - emersion 6y ago
    https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/why-not-just-use-a-subset-of-http-and-html.gmi https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users...
  - acdw 6y ago

ivanstojic 6y ago

That's actually covered in the deeper linked docs on Gemini. Setting it up on a separate protocol / markup allows you to make hard reasoning about what kind of privacy, features and protection you get as a user, rather than relying on the goodwill or current promises of your content provider.

echelon 6y ago
This won't get traction. It'd be better to declare a new doctype and use a reduced html. Just make it simple and make ads and JS bloat impossible. Enforcing ssl is kind of silly since browsers are starting to do that anyway independent of this. It's orthogonal.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  It’s not meant to “get traction” in the Silicon Valley sense of “everyone must use this or there is DOOM”, it’s meant to be useful for the communities that use it. If you open the Gemini link posted below about why just defining a new doctype wouldn’t work, give it a read.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >It’s not meant to “get traction” in the Silicon Valley sense of “everyone must use this or there is DOOM”, it’s meant to be useful for the communities that use it. If you're building a protocol that enforces certain strict standards, like in this case being text only because the internet is 'bloated' according to the author, then the only point of having it is adoption beyond your community. If all you want to do is communicate with ardent non-bloat advocates you can already do this on the regular internet, because everyone in that community does it voluntarily already There's no point in codyfing standards for a community that follows your standards to begin with
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Attracting people who agree with your community's standards to join your community, while hinting that maybe other people might not be interested, is perfectly reasonable. That's... pretty much how communities work.
      - Barrin92 6y ago
        yes but you don't need a disinct technical foundation that is incompatible with your surroundings. If you want to go play at the chess club you can simply go there and everyone is interested in chess, you don't need to start a new chess players only micro-nation that keeps all the other people out, in the middle of the forest where bloated cars can't get to. That'd be pretty unecessary. In fact if you want to attract new people, that's a really bad idea
        vertex-four 6y ago
        Solderpunk has explained the issues with specifying a safe subset of HTML, the article has been linked elsewhere in this thread. If you don't want to use a Gemini browser to access it, you can use this link: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/why-not-just-use-a-subset-of-http-and-html.gmi https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users... This would seem to be a similar sort of issue to when people say "come chat on IRC", or use a mailing list to communicate about a project, or whatever else - you're not going to use those if all you ever want to use is a web browser. And that's ok in my book. I'll hang out with the people who do want to use those tools.
        dsr_ 6y ago
        Except, of course, that there are IRC clients accessed through browsers, mail through browsers, Usenet through browsers... so you don't actually exclude people that way. If Gemini catches on, someone will write an add-on for Firefox that reads it. And then it's just part of the Web that is fast and looks a little different. And that link is a long-winded way of saying "It's good to put an artificial barrier in the way."
  - oscargrouch 6y ago
    If think what the parent is trying to say is; if this protocol is a subset of of we have today with HTTP and HTML, why not to create more of a political movement cheering for this subset to be use, the same way Google does with AMP? On the technical side of things, it looks like its an old battle replayed with older weapons, just to get go through the same path of HTML. "Oh, but we will not put more features". Ok, but people wont use it then because they can also serve text, markdown, etc... and can chill out, because they know if later they need to serve images, videos or graphics, they can do it with HTML. And i say this as a person who is also trying to create some alternatives to the web. But instead of going back to the nineties, i tried to think how the technology of 10 years ahead would look like. I've probably not maded it because its really hard to push the envelop when things are almost in the state of the art as Web is. But i also don't think the answer for the future will be in the past. You know what i think would be a really badass movement. To create a simple spec of the Web, even without Javascript. Because with "feature creep" Google through Chrome is making impossible for others players to create competing browser engines. So if two folks decide that they will create a web engine in this new language they like, it wont be an impossible goal. Because there's this simple version of the spec, with much less features. The people behind this might be very good at convincing people and real believers, this thing can float for some time working real hard for this.. But it will be really hard to get this out of a small niche. Anyway i love the thinking behind this. The meditation, the koan, is really on the right track. We need more rebels and fighters on this front. But i just can see it, how this can compete as a subset of a massively popular and deployed protocol with clients everywhere? How can it really differentiate itself, apart from what the web today already can serve to people?
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      The problem is that then you link to https://yourfriendsblog.org https://yourfriendsblog.org, and a couple years down the line your friend decides this safe subset is too restricting for them and decides to replace their blog with Wordpress with all the plugins and Cloudflare captchas and Google Analytics and evercookies and whatever else. The reader is dumped, unceremoniously, back into the big bad web, but could never know this before clicking the link. When you link to a Gemini URL, you're linking to something you know can't be replaced with something privacy-violating in the future. The worst that can happen is the server shuts down, which is a very different failure mode. And someone is less likely to do that than to switch to a different brand of HTML - or so's the hope. It's not going to be a major thing that everyone uses. That's ok! Neither is IRC, mailing lists, and whatever else - but people still use them, every day. There's ideas exchanged, friendships made, relationships formed, and they serve a not-insignificant community's needs.
- IshKebab 6y ago
  It would be a really good way to accelerate mobile pages, so I think HN might hate it.

DC-3 6y ago

Gemini's creator solderpunk wrote about this here [1]. [1] gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/why-not-just-use-a-subset-of-http-and-html.gmi

corobo 6y ago
I’m sure that would be an interesting read, is it available on a usable protocol?
- vertex-four 6y ago
  You can read it with a Gemini browser, along with a lot of other content! There's a list of clients at https://gemini.circumlunar.space/clients.html https://gemini.circumlunar.space/clients.html, along with SSH and HTTP bridges.
  - corobo 6y ago
    Aha nice one! I’m still not sold on it (you’re allowed to do websites without js/css!), but the effort and skill involved is commendable
    - cjallen88 6y ago
      True, but before you visit that website, you don't know anything about how the site was implemented, or what JS is going to run, or whethere there will be a big autoplay video advert, etc. When you visit a gemini URL, you know how it's going to serve you a limited capability, text based document, styled according to your own rules.
- emersion 6y ago
  https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/why-not-just-use-a-subset-of-http-and-html.gmi https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users...
- acdw 6y ago