Gemini: A web protocol alternative to HTTP/S

[680ff7879751cHikari]

Sorta bills itself as something between Gopher and HTML:

Limited nature of Gopher (inline links only,) with some features of markdown (in fact writing pages for it is a VERY stripped down form of markdown.) Protocol has baked in TLS 1.2 minimum as a requirement. ZERO client side scripting, but there are interesting things that can be done with server side java such as simple tamagachi like 'pet' sites, simple games, and there's even a social media platform (Station) that uses TLS cert for login credentials and serverside scripting.

I happen to like it for being text first, and can run on pretty much anything from the past thirty years. I'm not going to post links to my site since that could come across as this being an advertisement post, but I'm on flounder.online both because free (and I'm broke) and it mirrors/has an internal proxy so that any user content also goes to an HTML page for those that don't gemini. I've dumped my older
Writings on there (both fiction and non) that I want preserved, and it kinda does for web building what NaNoWriMo does for writing, 'stop with the nonsense bells and whistles and make the content.'

It's not perfect, mind you. Some could argue it's TOO minimalist, and naturally it won't 'replace' the normal web. Solderpunk (the protocol creator/head wonk) himself has stated that's not the goal. One could argue 'this is Gopher 2.0' or 'This is what Gopher should have been to begin with' and make a pretty convincing argument since it leans more towards Gopher than HTML, and that's OK.

I just figured... worth sharing. If nothing else I find it interesting and am trying to use it as a way to get back on the horse (again.)

Oh! Before I dump links to videos and information: Gemini has this neat thing where you can tell the client that 'this block of text is
preformatted do not touch' for ascii art, code, or the like and in the front tag before text starts you can add alt text for mouseover or
screen reader purposes. Also there are no font or color options for site creation, all that is up to the clients to figure out which again
makes it nice for vision impairments as I personally like dark background with light text on the largish side. Someone else might
like small text with sepia background and dark text. And the text (unless tagged as pre formatted) reflows to fit window or screen size
regardless of device. Makes it a great thing for mobile browsing.

Pity the google equivalents right now are kinda garbage.

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
Solderpunk's page concerning the spec and general information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqKHoLvUVNI

I would link to the DistroTube video on the subject, but.... to be perfectly honest? As much as I like how informative DT can be especially on the terminal side. Every so often he says something that I just plain think is either intentionally trolling (such as suggesting using Fish as a shell) or at best distracting due to coming across as egotistical (I think word processor s are Evil!)

Kinda surprised that Bryan Lunduke hasn't had anything to say on the matter.

[680ff787976faKolya]

Interesting. Reminds me of the time I dabbled with telnet clients and Citadel BBS.
I fixed the wikipedia link in your article, it was wonky due to the parentheses, the forum needs a little help with these. I also fixed a typo in the title ("Gemeni").

[680ff7879780cHikari]

Thank you Kolya. I realize Gemini isn't for everyone, as it certainly isn't for every situation. I just happen to find it interesting, and a damned sight saner than Gopher.

[680ff78797d14sarge945]

This seems cool, however I feel like it's solving the wrong problem.

It seems the current big problem with the web is extreme amounts of bloat, which in my opinion is largely caused by 3 factors:

1. The web development space is dominated by large, complicated frameworks
2. Both web developers and product owners are obsessed with feature creep, to the point where a basic, informational website will likely have logins and other nonesense that just gets in the way. The number of random news sites and blogs I see with random "hey are cookies okay?" popups is insane. No, your blog site doesn't need to set cookies.
3. Advertising right now is based around tracking. It's also handled explicitly by third parties, as is required to track in the first place as it relies on your browser to constantly hit the advertisers servers with tracking information as you surf various sites. This results in scripts loading other scripts which load other scripts which load other scripts etc etc which easily add up (a study done by Sydney University showed up to half of all bandwidth is taken up by tracking and advertisements).

Gemini effectively seems to be fixing these by simply bypassing the problem and making it a non-issue by simply not supporting features that enable this in the first place. While that does count as a solution, I don't exactly see it as necessary. Http is a fine protocol, and you do need some of it's more advanced features sometimes. Adding yet another protocol to the mix isn't really required, especially when a lightweight, good looking website can already be made with standard html and css without much effort.

Interestingly, I think the web bloat issue will eventually resolve itself, especially since ads are fast becoming obsolete (and are being replaced with "sponsored content" and paywalls), and businesses are eventually going to realise that maintaining a complicated mess of a website costs far too much for what it's worth.

The exception of course is "web apps", a unique form of cancer that refuses to die, but Gemini isn't going to fix that either. As long as loading up a slow, resource intensive, tracking riddled web app is more convenient than downloading an executable, these will continue to exist. Especially when it allows companies to charge a subscription model rather than selling software.

But I digress. There's a reason I develop back end rather than front end or "full stack".

I applaud Gemini for doing something new and I'm glad we have more technologies to choose from, but my prediction is that this will largely be a fad, and people will eventually move back to the proven technology, while still keeping their content simple.

This is why we have sites like based.cooking and it's miles better than any bloated mess of a recipe site. I expect to see more sites like that in the future as people get more and more annoyed by the modern web.

What REALLY excites me about the future of the web is ActivityPub. I'm seeing more and more sites adopt it every day and I think discourse on the internet will finally be able to heal and recover when centralized social media platforms are dead.

[680ff78797e63Kolya]

While I agree with most of your points, I don't think Gemini sets out to solve the bloat and tracking of the web.
It says right there that it's not meant to be a replacement for the web.
It seems mainly a fun experiment to me and likely won't ever get much mainstream attraction.

[680ff78797ffdHikari]

Oh I'm well aware Gemini won't grab any real traction. By the way it disallows client side scripts (including tracking) and the fact it basically requires you to client side certs in place of traditional login, thus making more hassle for your average user, it is absolutely not going to or meant to be more than a niche. However with creative use of an HTTPS proxy I can absolutely see a site that saves on space by putting a lot of its archived material up as .gmi files with a more basic gemini front end for those that are accessing purely off gemini while leaving a more presentable web interface up as your primary traffic source.

Yes i know you can achive similar by making your archives stripped down HTML, but at the same time I can see uses. Then again I just like the fact that I as the end user get to dictate the look of things. Makes it far easier on my tired eyes than 'oh hey go to stylish grab this extension that might or might not BREAK THINGS when trying to dark mode the whole web.'

[680ff78798183Kolya]

You are aware of Dark Reader, yes?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh
https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/dark-reader/ifoakfbpdcdoeenechcleahebpibofpc

Just asking because it's such an important extension to me. And it doesn't break anything.
It doesn't always work, but it doesn't break anything.

[680ff78798580sarge945]

Oh I'm well aware Gemini won't grab any real traction. By the way it disallows client side scripts (including tracking) and the fact it basically requires you to client side certs in place of traditional login, thus making more hassle for your average user, it is absolutely not going to or meant to be more than a niche. However with creative use of an HTTPS proxy I can absolutely see a site that saves on space by putting a lot of its archived material up as .gmi files with a more basic gemini front end for those that are accessing purely off gemini while leaving a more presentable web interface up as your primary traffic source.

Yes i know you can achive similar by making your archives stripped down HTML, but at the same time I can see uses. Then again I just like the fact that I as the end user get to dictate the look of things. Makes it far easier on my tired eyes than 'oh hey go to stylish grab this extension that might or might not BREAK THINGS when trying to dark mode the whole web.'

Personally I'd just use something like pandoc to convert markdown into HTML automatically as part of a build process, and host that. Best of both worlds.

[680ff787986a0Hikari]

Fair. Flounder is also free and I'm broke.

I may go the pandoc route if i move to linode or something.

[680ff7879879asarge945]

Pandoc is amazing. Highly recommended.

Please keep in mind it has its own markdown extensions for things like images

[680ff787988d0Hikari]

I just know that this will always be niche, may even be a fad that most of the enthusiasts drop from. However it uses basically no bandwidth or space compared to the modern web so 'eh why not'

I also have pandoc on a raspberry pi on my network I SSH into so I can do command line things on something that if it goes Boom no harm. So pandocs, tmux, wordgrinder (I use nano for config file editing, wordgrinder is for word processing stuff,) an SFTP server, media server, and debris from several failed projects.

[680ff787989bbsarge945]

Why use nano when vim is standard on every *nix install?

[680ff78798a9aHikari]

Nano does what I want, and is also on basically everything?