Dobody's capsule
░ ░░░ ░░ ░░░ ░░ ░░ ░░░░ ░ ▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓ ▓▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓ ▓▓▓ █ ████ █ ████ █ ████ █ ████ █ ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ██ ███ ██ █████ ████ - the gemlog/zine your local techbro doesn't like -
Gemini and its syntax for documents is completely different from the web. In many ways, but one exactly strikes me more as a visual artisan: it doesn't have stylesheets.
This is... good? Yes. It takes up less space, and allows for everyone to style the things they see the way they want to see them. Big letters, bold letters, colors, etc.
But hey. CSS is a wonderful thing for something else: completely disrupting the one-dimensional usual flow of a document and narrating through visuals.
Cool, right? But no way of doing this in Gemini doesn't mean despair: it means we're free to imagine things as we want. We can create a completely new way of specifying style.
Think about it, you're not bound by ANY standards on how to "encode" style. Complete freedom to imagine anything you want as a stylesheet.
A picture of a tree, in blue and orange. ASCII art of a map of your site. A poem. A legal document with clauses as rules. You could ask your reader to draw the site, or you could just as well tell a story, and it would all be a stylesheet.
I present to you, the GICS, or GImCaSp: Gemini Imaginative Capsule Spellsheet. It's more a spell than a stylesheet.
A barn with flies with open skies cherry tree family of mice drooling over my cheesy takes
OR:
This gemlog is a car going )))))=====YAY=====>> fast. A mountain is in the distance
OR OR:
1.2.4. This gemlog will be seen, in accordance with the end-user's best attempt at imagination, in the following manner: 1.2.4.a. You are smol 1.2.4.b. I am not bigger but I surround you. 1.2.4.c. Nah JK
Of course all of those are text, but you could just as well import an image. Point is, no more struggling to show what your site "looks like". I've had my fair share of problems with CSS when it's being demanding so I know as fun as it can be it can also be annoying. With a non-existing style specification, you're flexible. Gemini is smol and imaginative and fun and experimental anyway. You don't need to present it in a professional way. Here, the customer is not king (thank God for that). The customer is a welcome guest and visitor of your house. And you can have it be a clubhouse, a treehouse, a victorian house, a house of horrors, or an outhouse, all to your liking.
So publish your own stylesheet, link it on your homepage. And send me a message to show it to me!
Today I tracked a gopher on its way from Doc's lab to the boiler on the empty lot.
┌───────┐
│Doc's │
x │lab ┌──┴────┐
│ └────┤ │ The gopher was
│ │ │ a bit confused.
└───────────┘ │
│
┌─┐ └───┐ ┌────────────►
│ └────┐ │ │
│ └───────┘ └┐
└───┐ A big treelog│
│people sit on │
├──────────────┘
│
The log was cut down just a few days ago, to make space for a small chicken fence because someone didn't want poeple to cross their land. That someone went away to buy the fence and came back to see people enjoying themselves and sitting on the log's bark. They refused to move. The view from here was nice, and you could order a coffee or a pint because the tavern is within yelling distance. That's how we talk here. Most of us yell. There's an almost constant buzz of machinery coming from afar so we have to.
Insects are eating the log away, as it should be. They see and hear and know of all around these parts. They're not my friends but they let me in on something from time to time.
The colors are green and sandy brown and a lot of blue from the jeans of the workers sitting on the tree.
The tavern isn't mine but people in it are quite nice and although they haven't send me any envelopes with friend requests, they sometimes holler back to my incessant yodeling.
This gemlog paces itself like a tumbleweed. Sometimes fast, sometimes very slow. Makes for a peaceful existence to accept the wind.
I print things. Dobody is my gemzine. Its cover is made of treebark. There's a constant smell of mellow tobacco around. I placed an anti-buzz emitter in front of my door. I can't handle the sirens and I want to help people avoid them too. It works a lot like active noise canceling, but instead of silence, it reads you passages from different books. Some of those books I'll have written in many years' time.
Did I mention there's a mastodon in my fish pond? I don't know how it got here but I don't bother it much. It seems content with feeding on the view from the water. Don't throw a penny in there. It hates money.
,--"`-.-._
,' ,.:::::. `.
| ;' `:: |
,--,-, .::::..;','
,' ,' "" ,'_
'-)",'o "_\
_,' ""' .::. .:o;
; :::' ;
; `::; ;
: (_;_ ;:: ;\
; / ;::. ; \
/ / ,:' ;:: \
__|__/_ /:: ; \ `
_,-' `-<::'___ ;| \ \
,-' _,-""";-._`.(__ `. ;| \ | ____
( ,--'__,--' |`-`(@) \( `. `. ,-' `-.
\___.-' \ |::. \ : `. `./,-'""`. \
\ |::. ) : .-. `-._ ' `--.--' )
\ .-`.:' / : / `-.__ __,-'
-hrr- ) `.' ; / `"'
( `' ,\ , ---.(
,' --- `:`--' : : \
( : : ; `--`--`-'
`-`--`--'
Don't worry it just wants to say hi.
If you wrote a reply to this article or on the same subject, please email me at sayhi[at]delyo[dot]be to notify me. I'd love to hear your feedback and link it here.
Speculative stylesheet for this page was published on 2024-06-06