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Subject: MIME type and parameters for Gemini Index Files
From: Sean Conner <sean@conman.org>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019
Content-Type: text/gemini
Status: PROPOSED
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14
[RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as
shown here.
The Gemini protocol defines one new MIME type, "text/gemini". It is a plain
text format that includes a mechanism for linking to other documents. The
format is largely line-based format, described in [SPEC-SPEC]. It is there
that the MIME type was first defined. This document refines the
specification of the MIME type a bit further.
It is RECOMMENDED that all Gemini index files be encooded in UTF-8
[RFC2270]. For the occasions that cannot be done, a charset parameter
MUST be included to indicate the character encoding of the document:
text/gemini; charset=ISO-8859-1
Since the Gemini index file is intended to have embedded links to other
documents, the links themselves are limited to their own lines to ease
parsing but other typographical concerns such as formatting and wrapping of
text is currently unaddressed. To help authors express formatting intent,
the parameters from [RFC3676] are also defined for the MIME type
"text/gemini". The defined values for the "format" parameter are:
fixed The text should be displayed as is.
flowed The text can be reflowed to the width of the screen,
subject to [RFC3676] and one addtional caveat mentioned
below.
The default value for the "format" parameter is "fixed", to remain
compatible with existing documents. Also, in addition to the interpretation
of flowed text (section 4.1 of [RFC3676]) is added in that any line starting
with a "=>" (ASCII Equals Sign ASCII Greater-than sign) is a link and thus
semantically is a new line even in flowed text. A client MAY wrap the user
visible portion of the link if it exceeds the dimenions of the display.
The parameter "delsp" is discussed in [RFC3676] and will not be discussed
here, other than to say the default value for this is "no" (most documents
will not need that parameter).
References: