Read the 100 word intro and still don't know what this is. Left.
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Now rendering HTML is completely another level of difficulty.
If you ask me, I'd suggest to use Markdown instead of HTML for "simple web", but keep HTTP/1.1. Rendering Markdown is relatively simple and it's rich enough for a lot of document-based websites.
As for "web apps": use webassembly as underlying execution engine, but build something new for rendering, not coupled with any markup languages. Just provide canvas to draw and efficient API to implement draw operations. Application developers will use frameworks and frameworks prefer to draw everything themselves anyway. I think that kind of "web app engine" would be possible to implement with limited development resources, unlike modern web browser.
> Gemini is a new internet technology supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents. That's not a new idea, but it's not old fashioned either. It's timeless, and deserves tools which treat it as a first class concept, not a vestigial corner case. Gemini isn't about innovation or disruption, it's about providing some respite for those who feel the internet has been disrupted enough already. We're not out to change the world or destroy other technologies. We are out to build a lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader's privacy, attention and bandwidth.
Those words don't communicate much about Gemini at all. Gemini could be a webring for all this says (it's not, but you could build one on it), or it could be something entirely different. It turns out that Gemini is a protocol and a text format, but those 100 words don't say anything about either of those things.
Edit: Ah, found it. https://youtu.be/11EwyJ5fcBI?si=d4IxlsNADvl4zeG9
The link to the FAQ and spec is right there. If you have the attention span of a fruit fly (many such cases) I personally suggest trying to fix it, not feeling proud about it.
If this were an utterly pedestrian """deep dive""" about some AI thing it could have rambled as much as it liked that there wouldn't be this comment near the top, I assure you.
>Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between hosted files. Both the protocol and the format are deliberately limited in capabilities and scope, and the protocol is technically conservative, being built on mature, standardised, familiar, "off-the-shelf" technologies like URIs, MIME media types and TLS. Simplicity and finite scope are very intentional design decisions motivated by placing a high priority on user autonomy, user privacy, ease of implementation in diverse computing environments, and defensive non-extensibility. In short, it is something like a radically stripped down web stack. See section 4 of this FAQ document for questions relating to the design of Gemini.
Markdown is a superset of HTML, so your assertion cannot be true. But even an HTML-less subset is very hard to parse efficiently (or, at all) because of the various grammatical ambiguities. And then there's the various competing definitions...
Someone always bring this up whenever a permutation of this thread comes up, but I don't see the problem. You choose a definition and make that the spec. Even Hacker News only supports a very limited subset of Markdown.