Project Gemini

I have got only two annoyance on Gemini, lack of inline links and _font styling_, and they are by design (https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#44-questions-about-t...)

It's fine for something like HN, but I heavily rely on named links and emphasis on all my blogs and is a dealbreaker.

Same here. Those are my gripes exactly.

Yeah they missed an opportunity to more fully support something more like markdown that offered in-line links and basic text formatting. Missing tables is also quite the deal breaker for a bunch of things.

But yeah it seems like these lack of features is a willful and highly-opinionated approach to what the author of the protocol wants to take a stance on (their excuse is ease of implementation for clients, but I think it is a more of a deliberate choice). That's fine. It's their protocol and they can do what they want with it, but I think they missed an opportunity for it to take off.

Various people since have suggested we just settle on HTML 4 (with no scripting) and we'd be way better off and I agree.

And CSS from the client only!

Agreed.

* Inline links * Image support * Video/audio support?

I /kind/ of like the idea of fonts not being customizable, that it makes people focus on the content rather than over-styling. A lack of server-side font customization would be good for forcing inline links to be obvious, rather than potentially obfuscated.

I agree that fonts should not be specified by the document, although it would make sense to specify that you want a fixpitch font, or emphasis font. Pictures within the document might make sense (especially if you want to print it out); video/audio would be better as a separate file that you can link to, and display using a separate program.

I had a different set of criticisms, such as: mandatory TLS, no file size in the response, no range requests, etc. (I made up my own in order to address these and some others.)

Font customization is need to emphasise, it helps the reader understand the sentence better, other styles such italics, underline, and strike through… would greatly improve understanding the context and increase readability, it's just a matter of good typesetting.

Inline links also help with the same, people who dislike it should be able to move them out of the context (like some terminal based browsers).

I don't care about image, video etc, they can just be a link to the resource if/when needed... given alt text/CC is supported or accessibility. Same for color coding stuff and CSS, users should customize their client for that if they want to, not the server.

The thing is, while I agree we could just make decent and frugal websites, gemini not being based on html is a feature. It allows us separate both worlds.

When I open lagrange (a gemini client) and click on a gemini link from any gemini capsule (site), I am confident it will open something similar.

If I am opening a website, even a good frugal one made in HTML without js and click on an https link, I can't be sure if that won't send me to a page full of ads, tracking and heavy javascript with an embedded crypto miner.

You often find some http/https links on gemini capsules, but most clients will render the link in a different color so you kbow what to expect when clicking on a web link.

There was (and still is to a degree) a group of people critical of TLS. One half of the group (which I think you belong to) bitch about it being mandatory. The other half bitched about the use of TLS instead of <bespoke encryption system they just read about that is better/easier/smaller than TLS>. TLS was the main point of Gemini.

And about the lack of file size: I proposed a way to sneak it in, and it was rejected outright. Oh well.

You can use the Scorpion protocol that I made up if you want optional TLS and including the file size (and if you don't like the Han unification). You can use Spartan protocol if you want the Gemini file format (with one difference) but a different protocol that does not use TLS (although it is not the same as just Gemini without TLS, but works significantly differently), although if you have any dynamic files then you might need to handle them differently for Spartan than Gemini.

To me, inline links could be formatted as footnotes, the way we do in plain-text email.

You can prevent many kind of ads and tracking from working and disable JavaScripts (and other features if wanted, e.g. CSS) entirely, although there is no guarantee that it will work.

Gemtext can be full of ads too.

HTML 4 without JavaScript would go a long way to combat a lot of that. If you use the Gemini protocol to deliver it then you don't have to worry about cookies either. You could even prevent cross-site requests to avoid 1x1 pixels etc.