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1 gemini(7) "The Anachronaut's Guide" "The Anachronaut's Guide" 2 3 # NAME 4 5 *gemini* - information about Gemini 6 7 8 # DESCRIPTION 9 10 Gemini is a new (the project started in June 2019) application-level internet 11 protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special 12 consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates 13 linking between files. You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back 14 to its essence" or as "Gopher, souped up and modernised a little", depending 15 upon your perspective. Gemini may be of interest to people who are: 16 17 - Opposed to the web's ubiquitous user tracking 18 - Tired of obnoxious adverts, autoplaying videos and other misfeatures 19 - Interested in low-power computing and/or low-speed networks 20 21 Gemini is intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. 22 Instead, the design strives to maximise its "power to weight ratio", while 23 keeping its weight within acceptable limits. Gemini is also intended to be very 24 privacy conscious, to be difficult to extend in the future (so that it will 25 stay simple and privacy conscious), and to be compatible with a "do it 26 yourself" computing ethos. For this last reason, Gemini is technically very 27 familiar and conservative: it's a protocol in the traditional client-server 28 request-response paradigm, and is built on mature, standardised technology like 29 URIs, MIME media types, and TLS. 30 31 (excerpted from _gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi_) 32 33 34 # BROWSING GEMSPACE 35 36 In order to browse the universe of Gemini "capsules" (the equivalent of 37 websites), you need to use a suitable user-agent, or a proxy/gateway which 38 allows you to use one that you already have installed (e.g. a Web browser like 39 Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge). 40 41 Much of the available Gemini content is plain text, suitable for browsing in 42 the terminal. To help you get started, we have two Gemini user-agents installed 43 here: *bombadillo*(1) and *amfora*. 44 45 If you wish to use a graphical client, you can install one on your machine. 46 Gemini is a rather simple protocol, so a number of these are available, 47 suitable for different needs. Here are a few: 48 49 - Lagrange _https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/_ 50 - Geminaut _https://www.marmaladefoo.com/pages/geminaut_ 51 - Kristall _https://github.com/MasterQ32/kristall_ 52 53 There are also portals (aka proxies, gateways) which allow you to explore 54 Gemspace from your Web browser: 55 56 - _https://portal.mozz.us/_ 57 - _https://proxy.vulpes.one/_ 58 59 60 ## FINDING CONTENT 61 62 Of course, we have some content hosted here, at _gemini://anachronauts.club_, 63 but you'll probably want to find new stuff. There are several aggregators for 64 Gemini content which you may find useful: 65 66 - CAPCOM _gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/_ 67 - Spacewalk _gemini://rawtext.club/~sloum/spacewalk.gmi_ 68 - gmisub _gemini://calcuode.com/gmisub-aggregate.gmi_ 69 70 Additionally, there are a couple of search engines: 71 72 - GUS _gemini://gus.guru/_ 73 - Houston _gemini://houston.coder.town/_ 74 75 Hopefully this will lead you to content that you find interesting. And of 76 course, you have the option to publish the kind of content that you want to see 77 right here. 78 79 80 # PUBLISHING 81 82 Publishing Gemini content here at anachronauts.club is as easy as placing files 83 you want to publish in your _~/public_gemini_ folder, and making sure it's 84 world-readable (chmod a+r _filename_). Files with the _.gmi_ extension will be 85 served as the text/gemini hypertext format, documented in *text-gemini*(5), 86 which provides headers, links, quotes, and preformatted content. 87 88 We run "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" as our Gemini server, which will 89 automatically create directory listings. You can override the default listing 90 for a directory by creating an _index.gmi_ file inside it, or you can add a 91 header before the listing by creating a _.mollyhead_ file containing the header 92 content. Both of these files can be marked up as described in *text-gemini*(5). 93 94 Additionally, we allow you to set some server options on a per-directory basis 95 using _.molly_ files (Similar to _.htaccess_), such as directory listing order, 96 required client certificates, MIME types, and redirects. See 97 _https://tildegit.org/solderpunk/molly-brown_ for more information. 98 99 100 ## GEMLOGS 101 102 Making a Gemlog is pretty straightforward; just create a file for each post, 103 and a file with a list of links to the posts. You can make your easier to 104 consume by formatting the links in the listing as follows: 105 106 ``` 107 => post.gmi YYYY-MM-DD - Title 108 ``` 109 110 Where YYYY is the 4-digit year, MM is the 2-digit month number, and DD is the 111 2-digit day number. There are a number of tools which can parse lists of such 112 links as feeds, similar to Atom or RSS. 113 114 You can also create an Atom feed for your Gemlog. In the future, we will be 115 providing a tool to create Atom feeds automatically, as well as a site-wide 116 aggregator service. 117 118 119 ## DYNAMIC CONTENT 120 121 While Molly Brown supports CGI scripts, due to some architectural issues with 122 the server, we cannot securely allow users to run CGI scripts. We plan to 123 resolve these issues in the future in order to be able to offer this service. 124 125 126 ## WEB GATEWAY 127 128 We do run a Web gateway, so content you upload is available in normal Web 129 browsers. The gateway attempts to hue closely to the Lagrange browser in terms 130 of how it presents content, with one notable exception: local links to files 131 with certain image extensions (e.g. jpg/jpeg, png, gif, webp) will be rendered 132 as inline images, with the link text as their alt text. (This technically 133 violates the Gemini specification, but we assume that anyone using a browser 134 doesn't especially care about multiple requests being made.) 135 136 At this time, there is no way to prevent your content from being served over 137 our web gateway. If you are interested in such a feature, consider submitting a 138 patch to our gmikit-gateway project. Note that there is no way of preventing 139 other Gemini proxies from serving your content. 140 141 142 # NOTES 143 144 This document includes text written by solderpunk <solderpunk@posteo.net>, 145 taken from _gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/_ 146