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> Gemini documents certainly are never visually very attractive As a proponent of the Gemini protocol, I take issue with this line. The Gemtext format is a min
by MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
> Gemini documents certainly are never visually very attractive
As a proponent of the Gemini protocol, I take issue with this line. The Gemtext format is a minimal markup format for text documents. It's a way of semantically indicating "this part is plaintext", "this part is a link", "this part is a header". Unlike HTML/CSS, it does not provide a mechanism for the author to style their documents. Instead, it is up to the client to render the text document, however the client chooses. If most clients render text in an unattractive way, that's not a fault of the format. And I mean, I don't think plaintext is ugly.
Re: URL discussion
The author interprets "URL needs be UTF-8 encoded" as meaning that any escape codes in the URL need to use UTF-8. I interpreted that as meaning that the URL string as a whole should be UTF-8 encoded. In the author's example where there's a "%C5 in the URL", I'd just encode "%", "C", and "5" according to UTF-8. Maybe it goes without saying that the URL-line doesn't use UTF-16; but I think Solderpunk included it to be clear.
- Apreche 3y agoURL discussion: This is exactly one of the author's points. The wording in the spec is too ambiguous. Different people reading it are interpreting it differently. No human language is really 100% unambiguous, but better technical writing here could increase clarity dramatically.
- ilyt 3y ago> As a proponent of the Gemini protocol, I take issue with this line. The Gemtext format is a minimal markup format for text documents. It's a way of semantically indicating "this part is plaintext", "this part is a link", "this part is a header". Unlike HTML/CSS, it does not provide a mechanism for the author to style their documents. Instead, it is up to the client to render the text document, however the client chooses. If most clients render text in an unattractive way, that's not a fault of the format. And I mean, I don't think plaintext is ugly. Okay? But why it isn't markdown? What does it add that markdown does not have ? It is just taking few things from markdown but changing enough that markdown interpreter won't work. What's the point of that?. Different for sake of being different ? I can understand say removing any support from HTML elements in markdown if you want to make something entirely new, but the changes are just entirely pointless and not make it more readable. There appears to not even be a support for a basic table, while calling itself "rich document" format But the cherry on cake gotta be this part of paragraph: > You may have noticed that gemini supports links to other protocols (the above example includes a web link, beginning with `https`, and a gemini link, beginning with `gemini`). The author is using `the markdown code/monospace font` backticks from markdown, in document describing this shitty format, where they are not implemented, out of habit of using them in markdown.
- MatthiasPortzel 3y agoThe right comparison is comparing Gemtext to Markdown. I don't think Solderpunk or other Gemini users have any complaint with Markdown in particular. The biggest problem with Markdown is that the vast majority of Markdown libraries convert Markdown to HTML. These are of course useless to implementing a native client that isn't based on HTML. (In addition, the CommonMark test suite is concerned with defining the correct HTML to output for a given Markdown input.) So while Gemtext is heavily inspired by Markdown, there's no reason to introduce a reliance on Markdown.
- zimpenfish 3y ago> What does it add that markdown does not have ? "a satisfactory rendering can be achieved with a single pass of a document, processing each line independently" - from what I understand of Markdown parsing, it's a lot more complex than this because of the spec. > There appears to not even be a support for a basic table Given the number of Markdown table attempts I've seen over the years, I don't blame them for wanting to avoid that plague pit. Plus then rendering tables is another hellscape of torment.
- graypegg 3y agoGemtext has the pre formatted text fence that it specs as a mode-switch. Is that impossible with markdown? I think you could probably design every control symbol in markdown as a switch to “bold mode”, or “link content mode” and leave it at that. State machine style I guess?
- zimpenfish 3y ago> Is that impossible with markdown? No, that bit is the simple bit. > you could probably design every control symbol in markdown as a switch You need a layered mode though - you can have bold, italic, monospaced, header and link all active at the same time - which means you've got 32 states right there. But also! If you do something like `# Header _*bold-italic`, that italic and bold don't apply because the EOL stops the header state and retroactively cancels those bold-italic attributes. But on a non-header line, `_*bold-italic\nstill bold-italic*_` works fine because EOL doesn't cancel them. But also also! If you mismatch the order, it won't match both. Or, at least in Marked 2, if you mismatch the order on both sides of a non-attributed word, that word will get the wrong styling (`_*with mismatched_* middle *_attributes*_`). In summary, Markdown parsing is a clusterfuck.
- Groxx 3y agoUTF-8: how does that view mesh with >This scheme is syntactically compatible with the generic URI syntax defined in RFC 3986 ^ that defines the percent encoding scheme. About the only way I can think of is if Gemini URLs are a superset, and don't need to use percent encoding... but that means ambiguity when someone hands you a percent-encoded URL. Did they mean %C5 or %C5?
- wdkrnls 3y agoLagrange makes Gemini pages look quite attractive in my opinion. https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/ https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/