4 ms·

Gopher on TLS.

• webmaven 6y ago
  > Gopher on TLS. Going through the docs, it's apparent that Gemini is a bit more than just that. A description that is almost as succinct but more accurate would be 'A Gopher inspired protocol, over TLS'. It is worth noting that using TLS doesn't seem like an afterthought (it's required, not optional), and more closely resembles SCP rather than HTTPS, with the use of client certs a first-class feature for example. It would be an interesting project to implement a REST-like API over Gemini.
  • tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    > It would be an interesting project to implement a REST-like API over Gemini. URLs are limited to 1024 characters according to the spec, and query strings look like it's the only way for clients to talk to servers outside of the URL, so you have a pretty narrow pipe.
  • lolinder 6y ago
    My understanding is that the designers explicitly do not want applications to be possible/practical over Gemini. The request format is intentionally not extensible, and consists exclusively of a URL.
  • ufmace 6y ago
    It would be neat, but it's impossible, because Gemini explicitly forbids any request types other than GET, or rather a practical clone of GET that isn't called that because there isn't anything else anyways. Without a POST or other support for sending larger bodies, there's a ton of interesting stuff you just can't ever do. If they know they don't ever want that to be possible, well fair enough it's their protocol, but I don't see the point of a cool feature like identifying clients explicitly by client TLS certs only when clients can never do anything but view documents and maybe do a simple search anyways.