Hardly new, I know - a geminaut questions a design decision in the protocol.
I came to the small web a little backwards. I discovered Gemini via the tildeverse a little over a year ago, quickly created this ~/public_gemini directory and got posting, responding to others' posts, and finding their responses on Cosmos.
It was only after reading about Gemini's philosophy and creation back-story that I started to learn about Gopher more deeply. Now, having written a few Gemini and Gopher servers and spent some time in both protocols, I question one design choice in Gemini being strictly _more powerful_ than gopher: the lack of anything performing the role of item types.
Don't get me wrong: gopher's item types are a pain for implementors and a source of confusion for the unintiated ("what's with that magical /1/... path prefix?"). They certainly don't pass muster as a modern, simple, clean design. BUT one of the real joys of navigating around is the little indicators you get of what you're about to get yourself into with a link:
--- Getting started with Gopher -------------------------------
MAP [3] Getting started with gopher, software, more
(what is Gopherspace? We tell you! And find out how
to create your own Gopher world!)
TXT [4] Using your web browser to explore Gopherspace
(READ IT! LEARN IT! LOVE IT!)
(useful tips for gopher newbies, updated 17 November 2018)
MAP [5] The Overbite Project: Gopher clients for mobile and desktop (OverbiteWX, OverbiteNX,
Overbite Android)
(download gopher add-ons for Mozilla Firefox/SeaMonkey,
mobile clients for Android and more! Put Gopherspace on
your mobile phone or desktop computer!)
MAP [6] Other Gopher clients for various platforms
Will this link take me to another gopher menu? Show me a text file? Render an image? Download a binary file? Bounce me over to WWW? It's rather fantastic to get the visual cues that clients provide, and that's made possible by the information being embedded in the link itself in the underlying protocol.
I miss that clarity when browsing gemini.
---