💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~stack › gemlog › 2021-11-29.ansi.gmi captured on 2023-05-24 at 18:23:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Reading gerikson's post 'ANSI colors? Just say no'[1], I tend to agree, for a slightly different reason.
Personally I find the Gemini protocol unnecessarily arbitrary and restricting, but can live with the limitations. I have a good deal of respect for it simply because it exists and has managed to attract a sizable community which I happen to enjoy greatly. So I will go along and not even grudgingly.
It is clear that the intent of the protocol is to leave the presentation to the client, and minimize the writer's ability to shape, highlight, or otherwise style text beyond a very limited set of tools provided: Three levels of headings, quotation, blockquote, and links. Not even a 'bold' or 'underlined' tag to highlight a word!
Whether it is good or not, I am not totally convinced. It does make text readable and eliminates distractions, but I find myself _accenting_ words occasionally to bring more attention where it belongs. Italics, as others have said, have been used in print for centuries. So maybe it's a little too far.
Given that, it is obvious that the Gemini Way is completely against using ANSI codes to fix the RGB color of a word, or insert a blinking or animated text. Clearly that is a loophole that best be closed. Who wants hidden keywords in our text, or sites that are inaccessible to readers with disabilities?
Having said that, I love all kinds of weird ANSI stuff, but gemtext is not the place. Gemini protocol allows the server to serve any kind of files. Perhaps we should support a MIME type such as text/ANSI for ANSI art and tricks, and leave .gmi files clean of any escape codes.