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Authors: Ben K. <benk@tilde.team>
Date: 2021-04-17
This is the first in what will hopefully be a series to help other users learn to use nifty features in Diohsc, my favorite Gemini client, based on my own daily usage of it. I'm not really an expert on everything the client can do, but this should help new users touch the tip of the iceberg.
First of all, this assume that you already have Diohsc installed and figured out how to use its most basic functions. On your own you've probably figured out how to open pages and go back when you need to. The `help` command provides all the relevant information, and a quick look at that will teach you some of what's going to be mentioned in this post.
Yesterday on my gemcast, I talked about the need for Gemini clients to provide functions for capsule navigation beyond just "back" and whatever links you can find on the page you're reading. Some do already provide an "up" navigation function. Authors of Gemini capsules should also structure their capsules to help such functions be effective. Here's an example of this using my own capsule in Diohsc:
First, let's say you ended up on one of my interesting posts:
gemini://kwiecien.us/gemlog/shattered-pixel-dungeon.gmi
Why not start Diohsc with the URI:
$ diohsc gemini://kwiecien.us/gemlog/shattered-pixel-dungeon.gmi
Since you landed on this page and presumably liked it so much you want to see the other posts in the gemlog, you can use the period symbol to go to the root of the current directory:
> .
Maybe this isn't enough for you. Perhaps you want to see the capsule in all its glory, in which case you will go to the capsule's root like this:
> /
Not so hard, eh? You could have done the same thing relatively from the gemlog index page like this:
> ..
That would have just taken you up to the parent directory, which happened to be the capsule's root anyway.
You'll probably want to mark (read: bookmark) my capsule to visit more later. (Everyone does that.) I like to use short name codes for my marks I guess because of my Unix brain, but you can name the mark whatever you want. Assuming you're still at gemini://kwiecien.us/, you can simply type:
> mark kw
Now you have marked the page. Don't believe me? Try:
> mark
You should see it there. Any time you want to visit my capsule you can reference the mark like so:
> 'kw
Wow! That's fast. But wait, what if you hate my capsule now and want to delete it? You can't. HA HA HA. Actually you can, but it has to happen outside of Diohsc. Every mark is represented by a file, so in your system terminal you must do:
$ rm ~/.diohsc/marks/kw
You can also rename the file or whatever. You probably just wanted to change the mark's name, didn't you? If you already deleted the file, you can just mark again from within Diohsc. (Or create the file yourself, but that's a pain.) I usually don't rename my marks in the file system but create a new one first and then delete the old one, but I'm weird like that.
I use marks every day to visit my favorite aggregators and play Astrobotany. A simple 'pl mark takes me straight to my plant, no hassle!
Another personal favorite hack of mine is to mark URI for search engine queries directly. You actually can't do this while at the query URI because the client doesn't stay on it, but you can reference the URI by providing it as an argument for the mark command like so:
> gemini://geminispace.info/search mark gs
"gs" stands for "Gemini search", of course.
One important thing to remember is that in Diohsc the "back" function only works when you've followed a link to get where you are. Using a mark is doing a "jump" into a new context, which starts a new navigation flow, and you can think of that like opening a new tab in a graphical browser. You can "jump back" (and forth!) across the divide with this reference:
> ''
This information and more can be found by doing:
> help mark