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People here saying they'd rather use just text-only HTML, or HTML+CSS sans JS, don't understand that what attracts people to Gemini is the ease of implementatio

People here saying they'd rather use just text-only HTML, or HTML+CSS sans JS, don't understand that what attracts people to Gemini is the ease of implementation. The main quality of Gemini is that it is easy to understand and implement thus allowing normal developers to create clients and servers from scratch with minimal fuss. You can actually keep the whole spec in your head which is no longer something anyone can do with the Web stack. What goes on inside a WebView? There is no single person that can reimplement all of that alone anymore, it is too big, too complex. Meanwhile Gemini is so simple that people like me can craft a simple browser in a couple hours.

GuB-42 5y ago
But still, there is TLS. Gemini is a bit conflicted here. It has both privacy and simplicity as design goals. But privacy (materialized by encryption) is far from simple, so much that "rolling your own crypto" is seen as a cardinal sin, and for good reason. Crypto is an arm race, constantly under attack, constantly updated, and very easy to get wrong. The argument on the Gemini website is to use a library, which is indeed the most sensible thing to do, but if you allow code you don't really understand, one might as well use a webview and call it a day.
- soapdog 5y ago
  I agree, and to be honest I'd rather the TLS was optional because this would open Gemini to a lot of retro computers. Anyway, there is Mercury which is a simplified Gemini without encryption IIRC which solves that. The important part is that you can treat the TLS as a black box and still hold the Gemini spec in your head. It is easy to implement by simply leveraging a TLS and a network lib. To implement a modern Web browser you need way more than that these days, which is why almost all browsers are chromium :-/ no company can justify the effort to develop new engines and clients anymore (my opinion).
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    If you want Gemini without TLS there is Gopher. LaGrange supports both Gemini and Gopher - and I believe there's at least one server out there that does serve both as well though I can't remember the name of it.
Semiapies 5y ago
Then why distribute servers and clients? Why not just a spec that everyone involved makes their own servers and clients for? And why all this noise about how awful the web is?

GuB-42 5y ago

But still, there is TLS. Gemini is a bit conflicted here. It has both privacy and simplicity as design goals. But privacy (materialized by encryption) is far from simple, so much that "rolling your own crypto" is seen as a cardinal sin, and for good reason. Crypto is an arm race, constantly under attack, constantly updated, and very easy to get wrong. The argument on the Gemini website is to use a library, which is indeed the most sensible thing to do, but if you allow code you don't really understand, one might as well use a webview and call it a day.

soapdog 5y ago
I agree, and to be honest I'd rather the TLS was optional because this would open Gemini to a lot of retro computers. Anyway, there is Mercury which is a simplified Gemini without encryption IIRC which solves that. The important part is that you can treat the TLS as a black box and still hold the Gemini spec in your head. It is easy to implement by simply leveraging a TLS and a network lib. To implement a modern Web browser you need way more than that these days, which is why almost all browsers are chromium :-/ no company can justify the effort to develop new engines and clients anymore (my opinion).
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago
  If you want Gemini without TLS there is Gopher. LaGrange supports both Gemini and Gopher - and I believe there's at least one server out there that does serve both as well though I can't remember the name of it.

Semiapies 5y ago

Then why distribute servers and clients? Why not just a spec that everyone involved makes their own servers and clients for? And why all this noise about how awful the web is?