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I tried to get into Gemini. I wrote a server in Elixir. Then I started to write content. The lack of inline links is a brutal and I'm pretty sure it'll keep Gem

by latch 5y ago

I tried to get into Gemini. I wrote a server in Elixir. Then I started to write content. The lack of inline links is a brutal and I'm pretty sure it'll keep Gemini from growing beyond anything but a curiosity. IT isn't HTML lite. It's text.

csande17 5y ago
Personally, I could never use a platform that didn't support inline links[1]. Simply unthinkable! How could you possibly indicate which part of the text a link was related to? [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a
- om2 5y ago
  HN’s lack of inline links is one of its worst features, and comments with large numbers of links are unbearable. Fortunately, longform HN comments are rare. Gemini also sounds more limited than even HN comments, because here you can put a URL like http://example.com http://example.com inline and it works fine, you just can’t replace the URL with a custom label. In Gemini, it’s more literal than that - a link must be on its own line, not in the middle of a paragraph.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    Author of linked post here. I've noticed that at least in the client I use (amfora) URI are not treated any differently from text and the client can insert a line break in the middle of them, making selecting the URI to paste it elsewhere hard. This is not the client's fault btw, it's part of the spec. Anything not preceded by the magic characters '=>', '#', '`' or '>' is just treated literally.
- mrspeaker 5y ago
  The article does mention this a bit, and (after reading quite a bit of Gemini content) I agree: 'The links are awkwardly placed, and the "placeholder" markers (such as numbers or brackets) to connect the text to the link below has not gelled to a standard.' It's like hashtags in tweets - it'll eventually become some kind of community ad-hoc standard, that will be inferior to simple inline links. I guess it makes things harder to parse, so understand why they did it - but inline links is HTML's killer feature. The rest is fluff!

by latch 5y ago

csande17 5y ago

Personally, I could never use a platform that didn't support inline links[1]. Simply unthinkable! How could you possibly indicate which part of the text a link was related to? [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a

om2 5y ago
HN’s lack of inline links is one of its worst features, and comments with large numbers of links are unbearable. Fortunately, longform HN comments are rare. Gemini also sounds more limited than even HN comments, because here you can put a URL like http://example.com http://example.com inline and it works fine, you just can’t replace the URL with a custom label. In Gemini, it’s more literal than that - a link must be on its own line, not in the middle of a paragraph.
- gerikson 5y ago
  Author of linked post here. I've noticed that at least in the client I use (amfora) URI are not treated any differently from text and the client can insert a line break in the middle of them, making selecting the URI to paste it elsewhere hard. This is not the client's fault btw, it's part of the spec. Anything not preceded by the magic characters '=>', '#', '`' or '>' is just treated literally.
mrspeaker 5y ago
The article does mention this a bit, and (after reading quite a bit of Gemini content) I agree: 'The links are awkwardly placed, and the "placeholder" markers (such as numbers or brackets) to connect the text to the link below has not gelled to a standard.' It's like hashtags in tweets - it'll eventually become some kind of community ad-hoc standard, that will be inferior to simple inline links. I guess it makes things harder to parse, so understand why they did it - but inline links is HTML's killer feature. The rest is fluff!