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I really enjoyed messing around with Gemini a while ago! But after the "messing around" stage with the protocol itself, the restrictions inherent to gemtext sap
by graypegg 11mo ago
I really enjoyed messing around with Gemini a while ago! But after the "messing around" stage with the protocol itself, the restrictions inherent to gemtext sapped my excitement around it.
It's a mark up language squarely focused on those that write text, but arduous to use if you want to share things you've illustrated, which is most of what I share online that isn't tech related. There's of course the argument that inline images/a spec'd way to expose an image directory listing with thumbnails/etc would only serve to distract or exploit you... but that also ignores the fact that people make art for your eyeballs too. Text is certainly the first class citizen, where images/music/video are all tied for second class, accessible only by downloading them 1 by 1.
That does mean it's perfectly fit for purpose! I wouldn't say it's bad just because I don't get my specific needs met. Someone who's needs are met by Gemini will love it.
- 1313ed01 11mo agoThere are Gemini clients that can inline images, so visitors to a site could decide to enable that if they wanted to see for instance a list of thumbnails.
- rzzzt 11mo agoAre clients permitted/expected/tolerated to run off and fetch the contents of image links for inline display, once a page containing such links is retrieved?
- 1313ed01 11mo agoThey are not supposed to do that, but some clients have an option to enable it anyway. There are also clients that make a second request to ask for a favicon. In the spirit of the protocol the "icon" is just a UTF-8 symbol, but that behaviour is still controversial.
- zzo38computer 11mo agoOnly if the page is inside of a ZIP archive stored on the local computer and only if the link is to a picture within the same ZIP archive. (However, it would be good to have an option to disable inline display even in that case.)
- tormeh 11mo agoThis would be my preferred way of document distribution. Images and video is allowed, but they have to be part of the same document as the text. Everything is in the same zstd'd tarball. No separate roundtrips for fetching images. Either you download the document or you don't. Would be cool with some limitations on overall document size as well.
- immibis 11mo agoNot really, in fact they're forbidden - those clients are spec-uncompliant.
- tad_tough_anne 11mo agoDo you have a citation for that? I checked the protocol[1] and gemtext[2] specs but couldn't find it. 1. gemini://geminiprotocol.net/docs/protocol-specification.gmi 2. gemini://geminiprotocol.net/docs/gemtext-specification.gmi
- rzzzt 11mo agoSomeone linked the FAQ elsewhere and point 1.6 covers this: https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#16-so-its-just-words-then-no-pictures-no-sound:~:text=You%20can%27t%20embed%20images%20or%20videos%20inside%20a%20page https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#16-so-its-just-words...
- Jtsummers 11mo agoPermitted? Technically, it can't be stopped (well, it kind of can, see "Tolerated?"). Expected? No, it's counter to the intentions of the community. Tolerated? Maybe. Here's a fun one (saw this in one of the past discussions dang linked): https://github.com/makew0rld/amfora/issues/199 https://github.com/makew0rld/amfora/issues/199. That was over favicons, but the response would be similar if linked images were automatically fetched. Though the protocol has a "backoff" return code that could be used to throttle those things that would be less disruptive than Drew's approach of banning specific clients.
- rollcat 11mo agoAgree. I don't think Gemini plugs any hole that Gopher could've left open. As it is, it's just a motherfuckingwebsite.com, except it's trying to take itself seriously.
- bitmasher9 11mo agoI want my protocols to take themselves seriously.