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Re: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing

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From: Luca Saiu <luca@ageinghacker.net>

Subject: Re: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing

Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 01:10:59 +0100

Message-ID: <ssq3im$ugh$1@dont-email.me>

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On 2022-01-24 at 21:24 +0000, bunburya wrote:

On 23/01/2022 16:58, Luca Saiu wrote:
> To me the lack of control on preformatted text is more serious than the
> lack of inline links, possibly because of the technical topics I
> normally write about.
> Not being able to display source code clearly is a fatal flaw for me;
> and notice how Gopher is less flawed than Gemini in this sense, by
> virtue of being less abstract.
What is the issue you are having with pre-formatted text?

On Gemini we have to clearly indicate what is pre-formatted and what is

not, because the default is that whitespace can be congealed and lines

broken and moved in order to fill paragraphs; Gopher does not do it, but

that means that paragraphs may end up displayed too narrow or too wide

for the client.

If I convert from HTML my quick hack based on Lynx fails because the

information on what was pre-formatted is lost. Converting *well* from

HTML requires analysing CSS as well.

For new text, not obtained by conversion, the Gemini solution works

well.

Line numbering and syntax highlighting are the main things that come
to mind - I think these could be achieved on the client side, though
I'm not aware of any client that currently does so.

Yes. I am not against these features as long as line numbering does not

interfere with cut-and-paste.

(I know there was some discussion of syntax highlighting in
pre-formatted text on the mailing list a while ago; the majority view seemed to
be that the alt text part of the pre-formatted text block could indicate the
language, though some disagreed with using alt text in that way).

The alt text is a good feature by itself (example: this kind of

colour-coding for different programming languages or abstraction layers:

http://ageinghacker.net/projects/jitter-tutorial/ ), but in my opinion

not very philosophically coherent with the rest of Gemini which is

otherwise so minimalistic. And the alt text, again, lends itself to

semantic extension.

> How do you, and other people here, solve the problem? Do you write
> sites accessible only to Gemini or only to Gopher?
Personally I publish only to Gemini; however, I write very little
anyway (really just my gemlog, which is not updated all that often) so
I don't claim to be any kind of example to follow.

I see. Thanks.

I think I will write some simple translator to generate Gemini, Gopher

and HTML from the same source.

--

Luca Saiu -- http://ageinghacker.net

Related

Parent:

Re: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing (by bunburya <bunburya@tilde.club> on Mon, 24 Jan 2022 21:24:14 +0000)

Start of thread:

Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing (by Luca Saiu <luca@ageinghacker.net> on Sun, 23 Jan 2022 13:25:29 +0100)