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Alt text and media types for preformatted text

Caolan McMahon caolan at caolan.uk

Mon Mar 1 10:18:28 GMT 2021

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One way I think gemini got this right was in using links for images. It

requires a textual description of the image, and it's shown to all

users. There's no split in the presentation, everyone is treated that

same. I like that.

Unfortunately, alt text for preformatted blocks does introduce content

only likely to be seen by a minority of users.

One solution lies within your comment: remove preformatted blocks from

text/gemini so that we have to link to resources of text/plain or text/

whatever. Just like we do with images etc.

Probably unpopular but simple, right? Is there a mime type for ascii-art?

Clients would probably load these inline which would result in multiple

requests, though.

I like this suggestion.

Personally, if I could choose a client that displayed these inline when clicked I'd be happy. Those preferring simpler clients could simply follow the link.

It would provide both content type and alt text by removing features - the feature that happens to be greatest extensibility risk in gemtext. Ideal.