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Nico nico at itwont.work
Tue Feb 9 16:30:12 GMT 2021
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On 09/02/2021 16:12, Daniel Nagy wrote:
Hello,
I want to propose to drop the double slashes from the gemini URL syntax.
The reason for this is that they dont serve any semantic value and while
the
project is still young, I think it could still be changed. So instead of
  gemini://example.com
we would have:
  gemini:example.com
In fact, Sir Tim Berners-Lee apologized[0] for introducing them in the
http URL
syntax. I see the following advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:
 - Less typing
 - Less wasted screenspace
 - Less transfered bytes and less stored bytes on disk and memory
Disadvantages:
 - Newcomers might see familiarities with http in the double  slashed
syntax and
  recognize, that the following token is a hostname, which will   be
contacted.
  There is a chance that, without the slashes, newcomers might   expect
  something else than a hostname after the color, although I
personally think
  that chance is low.
 - Implementations would need to adapt to this and some URL  parsers in
their
  respective languages might not support the parsing of such   syntax.
 - Automatic URL detectors, like for example a terminal emulators
 where you can
  click on a URL and it openes, might have trouble detecting   this
URL form and
  therefore not recognize links. Those terminal emulators would
need adaption.
Of course, the double slashed syntax could still be supported, but the more
compact format could be encouraged. Any feedback or suggestions would
greatly be
welcomed.
Regards,
Daniel
[0]: https://www.sitepoint.com/sir-tim-berners-lee-http-slashes/I don't really feel like the benefits of this are worth the drawbacks that we would be breaking the URL standard, breaking existing URL-handling libraries, just breaking things for the sake of, what, saving two bytes? I don't think it's worth it. If you want to save screen space, just don't display the gemini://, if you are in a gemini client it is safe to assume you are speaking gemini (many web browsers don't display the "https://" for similar reasons)