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solderpunk solderpunk at SDF.ORG

Wed Feb 5 09:22:43 GMT 2020

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Now that the line-wrapping issue seems to be sorted, at long last, thenext thing I want to quickly clear up is whether or not we really dowant some kind of pre-formatted text mode (the thing we've beendiscussing with ``` syntax).

All the header/list stuff we've talked about is definitely - and alwayswas definitely - going to be optional and ignorable by simple clients.So I don't feel as strong a need to build consensus on that, and I'mpretty sure I'm going to spec it. But verbatim mode would likely be anobligatory thing to implement, if only because if it's in the spec atall, some authors will produce content with would-be Gemini links in it,under the expectation that clients won't try to parse them as linksbecause they're within a verbatim text block. Some of these lines maynot actually use valid link syntax, for the purposes of teaching newbieshow *not* to format their links, so clients which ignore the ``` linesmay find themselves in trouble (although, ideally, all clients should berobust against malformed link lines - Sean, is that in the torturetest?).

I don't think there's any question that such a facility would havelegitimate and useful applications, the quesiton is whether they provideenough value to be worth the increased implementation effort - which,for the record, is quite low.

The only reason I think this is worth questioning is that the *original*reason having such a feature was proposed on this list was as awork-around to our old style of text reflow breaking lists. The ideawas that bulleted lists could be enclosed in ``` lines to prevent thelines all getting joined together. This was never a great solution inthe first place (as was discussed on the list, it just meant thatcontent would display weirdly if any individual list item was longerthan a single line on a given client's display), and now it is totallyunecessary as our new line-wrapping solution doesn't break lists, orpoems, or source code.

As far as I see it, the main arguments in favour of a preformatted blockconcept now are:

1. The ability to include text/gemini syntax without it actually being rendered by the client, so Gemini can be discussed/taught over Gemini.2. The ability to insist that some content (e.g. source code, ASCII art), be rendered in a monospace font, even by graphical clients which might display text in a variable width font by default.

Point 2. could in principle be nullified by mandating the use ofmonospace fonts for all clients, but I think this is a pretty bad ideaand conflicts with the idea that clients should be *able* to makereading text/gemini a typographically pleasant experience.

I think the case is strong enough to spec these, but I recall at leastone person already suggested we shouldn't, so I'm willing to hearcounter arguments, if anybody wants to provide them.

Cheers,Solderpunk