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[users] Tables in Gemtext

Kiëd Llaentenn kiedtl at tilde.team

Sat Jan 2 03:04:21 GMT 2021

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Hello,

Just recently I was creating a Gemini mirror of an HTTP site, and cameacross several pages that made heavy use of tables. I did what I suspectmost Gemini publishers/content authors do: use ASCII tables, like so:

+--------------------------------+-------+| Food | Price |+--------------------------------+-------+| Eggs | $2 || Eggs and spam | $4 || Eggs, spam, eggs and spam | $8 || Spam spam baked beans and spam | $8 || Just spam | $2 |+--------------------------------+-------+

There are several problems with this approach, though:

1. It requires the client to display the table in a monospaced font, which many would prefer not to use.2. Text in table rows won't be wrapped properly on narrow displays.3. ASCII tables are anything but screenreader friendly, since there's no semantic information about the table's structure.4. It mixes information and presentation, which is against the spirit of Gemini(?)

So, are there any other options for having tables in Gemtext, other thanadding a new syntax to the spec? I'm hard pressed to think of anothersolution.

Regards,

---kiedtl