💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2021 › 202104 › 20210424-gemini-and-semantics.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 17:02:12. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-04)
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Over the last few days, there has been a discussion on the Gemini OrbitalFox mailing list about the idea of semantics. The proposal is to create a slightly-modified format for links that include descriptions and predicates. This would allow objects to be linked together in a way that's easy for machines and humans alike to interpret.
The concept is not a bad one, but it's something that only serves to improve the ability for programs and parsers to link content together. There are other ways, primarily driven by plaintext, that can serve the purposes better for humans.
Part of the issue I have with the modern Web, and indeed most of the Internet, is its complexity. Libraries are built on top of libraries; frameworks are designed to interact with other frameworks. The result is that most Internet applications make content meant to be read by other Internet applications, so that it can be transformed into new content to be read by still other Internet applications.
It's all machines talking among themselves, while humans wait patiently for something to pop out that they can interact with.
Gopher, Gemini and other so-called "small Internet" protocols are not meant to be chugged through endlessly by machines. These protocols are meant to be used first and foremost by humans, and any new standard or extension adopted by them should serve humans first. Pages aren't built with easily-parsable but difficult-to-read HTML or JavaScript. There are no overly-complicated CSS sheets, no cookies, no dense interchange formats like XML--and perhaps most importantly, no remotely-served code that runs on the user's local machine. There are just text documents with minimal formatting, links for any non-text content, and maybe a few CGI scripts. It almost can't get any simpler.
Semantics are a good idea, but I wouldn't be in favor of them if they in any way impede a human's ability to interact with and understand Gemini content. It's only a slippery slope from there until these "small" protocols become as unwieldy as the big, bloated protocols they want to be lighter than.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]