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Easy-to-use Gemini writing apps?

I think it would be awesome if there were some more easy-to-use Gemini publishing methods (we already have Midnight Pub and Flounder and some others) so that it’s not only sysadmins that can write on here.

Those apps don’t need to use Gemini/Titan etc. They can use SMTP, SFTP, GIT, or even HTTP under the hood. I personally use rsync, from a script. The user shouldn’t even have to see what protocol the app is using.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I felt that this blog post by Drew:

Reframing the philosophy of Gemini

was elitist, the “read only” part:

Gemini is a read-only protocol for hyperlinked content distribution.

No, I didn’t have a problem with Drew saying that at all, because I interpreted it as being about the protocol itself. We don’t need to shoehorn writing and posting onto port 1965 gemini:// lower-case G gemini.

To the extent that people have already managed to do that, that’s fine, I don’t want to stop those efforts either.

But it’s fine that people use non-Gemini protocols to publish on Gemini. That’s not a problem. It’s fine.

It’s like email, you can’t send email with IMAP. That doesn’t mean IMAP isn’t awesome, it is.

That’s why I don’t mind thinking of gemini as read-only, as a mostly read-only medium or resource, outside of the occasional search string.

“Read-only” applies only to the protocol.

We definitively don’t want the community to be read-only.

That would be awful.

That’s why I’m happy whenever there’s easy-to-use publishing apps, or bihosting.

Drew sometimes isn’t the best at making discoverable, easy-to-learn software (and neither am I). For example, contributing patches and discussions to projects on sr.ht via email and git send-email is so convienient, cozy, easy and fun compared to GitHub and it’s always a relief to see that a repo is on there and not on GH.

Now.

But when I first tried doing it I had no idea what was going on and it was super stressful. Email addresses that contain tildes and slashes? Uh… It just wasn’t clear how and what to do.

That’s why I welcome well-designed porcelain layers for people who don’t know what they are doing so they also can join in the fun.♥ While always still keeping open the fetch/scrape/rsync/ssh/smtp paradise for us who love to remix and mash up stuff, or use lower-end devices.