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Hello everyone I've been thinking about various discussions we've been having on the list related to how to use and build on/augment the geminisphere in a way that is true to the gemini vision, such as how do we: - indicate and find comments between pages in a lightweight gemini-way - provide ways to optionally "include" images or text - signal where is your a site home page - provide a common navigation menu - indicate the location of your site logo I've started a proposal to define a way for an author to signal these elements in a lightweight, text based and optional way, dubbed "Lightweight Unicode Author Client Hinting for Gemini - LUACH" The idea is to codify a minimal set of conventions we can use to build further structure on top of the gemini space to support additional purposes. I must emphasis the intention is for this to be *wholly optional* and I dont think it needs to become part of the canonical standard, as it is just a set of optional text conventions. Maybe if successful it could be a set of common conventions that are becoming adopted, and a good practice. It codifies things that are emerging as common conventions we see in geminispace, or more widely. For example "standard" names for home page or ways of communicating comments textually => gemini://myowndomain/home.gmi Home => gemini://xyzdomain/cookery/egg-recipies.gmi Responds to XYZ thoughts on how to cook eggs Or as we already see the use of unicode glyphs to indicate comments such as the speech bubble ? emoji or house ? for home. This is intended to be very lightweight and helpful for readers using simple command line clients as much as it might be for richer clients who may provide additional UI. There isnt any overhead for authors apart from providing these optional hints in their link text, which can help everyone. The "responds to" and "has comments" can be used by search crawlers to build a meta layer of who is commenting on whom within gemini space I've put it in Github here: https://github.com/LukeEmmet/GeminiLUACH Comments and further thoughts welcome Best wishes - Luke
This is an interesting proposal, but I feel like it would become a chore when writing, something you'd try and remember to do because it wouldn't feel natural. Which is probably the opposite of what we want. I also don't see the total need for this, could you maybe explain more about a use case? makeworld ??????? Original Message ??????? On Thursday, June 4, 2020 7:22 AM, Luke Emmet <luke.emmet at gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everyone > > I've been thinking about various discussions we've been having on the > list related to how to use and build on/augment the geminisphere in a > way that is true to the gemini vision, such as how do we: > > - indicate and find comments between pages in a lightweight gemini-way > - provide ways to optionally "include" images or text > - signal where is your a site home page > - provide a common navigation menu > - indicate the location of your site logo > > I've started a proposal to define a way for an author to signal these > elements in a lightweight, text based and optional way, dubbed > "Lightweight Unicode Author Client Hinting for Gemini - LUACH" > > The idea is to codify a minimal set of conventions we can use to build > further structure on top of the gemini space to support additional > purposes. > > I must emphasis the intention is for this to be wholly optional and I > dont think it needs to become part of the canonical standard, as it is > just a set of optional text conventions. Maybe if successful it could be > a set of common conventions that are becoming adopted, and a good > practice. It codifies things that are emerging as common conventions we > see in geminispace, or more widely. For example "standard" names for > home page or ways of communicating comments textually > > => gemini://myowndomain/home.gmi Home > > > => gemini://xyzdomain/cookery/egg-recipies.gmi Responds to XYZ thoughts > on how to cook eggs > > Or as we already see the use of unicode glyphs to indicate comments such > as the speech bubble ? emoji or house ? for home. > > This is intended to be very lightweight and helpful for readers using > simple command line clients as much as it might be for richer clients > who may provide additional UI. There isnt any overhead for authors apart > from providing these optional hints in their link text, which can help > everyone. > > The "responds to" and "has comments" can be used by search crawlers to > build a meta layer of who is commenting on whom within gemini space > > I've put it in Github here: > > https://github.com/LukeEmmet/GeminiLUACH > > Comments and further thoughts welcome > > Best wishes > > - Luke
Hello makeworld There are a number of use cases I have in mind, but all are intended to be within the spirit of gemini as presented so far. 1. Helps to assemble the meta-graph of commentary between pages. Various gemini search engines (global or local) could show you for any provided URL what other pages have provided comments or responses. If a link is not decorated some how, the search bot cannot tell if you are merely linking to a site or responding to it. In this way I think it could support a gemini-flavoured commentary infrastructure 2. Improved UI for clients navigating a site. If you follow a link deep into a site you may not know where the "home" is or other common navigational links (you might guess). This could provide a way to canonically indicate it. 3. Optional inclusion of content in-context. For example to see a figure within a page, without it being forced to be included (as is with html). It is a hint that can be taken or not depending on user preference. 4. To better enable navigation of everyone through gemini space. Better knowing what you will get before you click on a link is a way for everyone to make a calculation as to whether you want to follow the link or if you dont need to. As to the matter of naturalness, it is intended to be as lightweight as it can be and builds on practices that already exist (e.g. speech bubble or home emoji, or the normal practice of using "home" as the link display text). I tried to choose a simple and hopefully-salient set of elements, but the actual code points and text is up for discussion. There is a textual form as well as the unicode code points, so for example you can just do this =>menu.gmi Site [navigation] There might be other use cases that could make use of the pattern, but I think the point would be to have a minimally useful set to start with and see how it goes. At the moment we are in the same situation as the web where every link is an untyped reference and there is no way of understanding the deeper structure unless you have the resources of Google behind you. The actual details can be evolved, its really whether the pattern is useful as a codified convention on top of Gemini, and to explore what the network effects or authors, clients, search, applications, adopting this or something like it would need to be be to make it work (one site doing it alone is of little value). Best Wishes - Luke On 04-Jun-2020 14:50, colecmac at protonmail.com wrote: > This is an interesting proposal, but I feel like it would become a > chore when writing, something you'd try and remember to do because it > wouldn't feel natural. Which is probably the opposite of what we want. > > I also don't see the total need for this, could you maybe explain more > about a use case? > > makeworld > > ??????? Original Message ??????? > On Thursday, June 4, 2020 7:22 AM, Luke Emmet<luke.emmet at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hello everyone >> >> I've been thinking about various discussions we've been having on the >> list related to how to use and build on/augment the geminisphere in a >> way that is true to the gemini vision, such as how do we: >> >> - indicate and find comments between pages in a lightweight gemini-way >> - provide ways to optionally "include" images or text >> - signal where is your a site home page >> - provide a common navigation menu >> - indicate the location of your site logo >> >> I've started a proposal to define a way for an author to signal these >> elements in a lightweight, text based and optional way, dubbed >> "Lightweight Unicode Author Client Hinting for Gemini - LUACH" >> >> The idea is to codify a minimal set of conventions we can use to build >> further structure on top of the gemini space to support additional >> purposes. >> >> I must emphasis the intention is for this to be wholly optional and I >> dont think it needs to become part of the canonical standard, as it is >> just a set of optional text conventions. Maybe if successful it could be >> a set of common conventions that are becoming adopted, and a good >> practice. It codifies things that are emerging as common conventions we >> see in geminispace, or more widely. For example "standard" names for >> home page or ways of communicating comments textually >> >> => gemini://myowndomain/home.gmi Home >> >> >> => gemini://xyzdomain/cookery/egg-recipies.gmi Responds to XYZ thoughts >> on how to cook eggs >> >> Or as we already see the use of unicode glyphs to indicate comments such >> as the speech bubble ? emoji or house ? for home. >> >> This is intended to be very lightweight and helpful for readers using >> simple command line clients as much as it might be for richer clients >> who may provide additional UI. There isnt any overhead for authors apart >> from providing these optional hints in their link text, which can help >> everyone. >> >> The "responds to" and "has comments" can be used by search crawlers to >> build a meta layer of who is commenting on whom within gemini space >> >> I've put it in Github here: >> >> https://github.com/LukeEmmet/GeminiLUACH >> >> Comments and further thoughts welcome >> >> Best wishes >> >> - Luke >
I like this idea, with a few exceptions. For the logo (?) proposal, I like the favicon.txt proposal as a better, terminal compliant way to solve this problem. I'm also not sure how the Menu (? ) is different from Home (?). On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 12:22:21PM +0100, Luke Emmet wrote: > Hello everyone > > I've been thinking about various discussions we've been having on the list > related to how to use and build on/augment the geminisphere in a way that is > true to the gemini vision, such as how do we: > > - indicate and find comments between pages in a lightweight gemini-way > - provide ways to optionally "include" images or text > - signal where is your a site home page > - provide a common navigation menu > - indicate the location of your site logo > > I've started a proposal to define a way for an author to signal these > elements in a lightweight, text based and optional way, dubbed "Lightweight > Unicode Author Client Hinting for Gemini - LUACH" > > The idea is to codify a minimal set of conventions we can use to build > further structure on top of the gemini space to support additional purposes. > > I must emphasis the intention is for this to be *wholly optional* and I dont > think it needs to become part of the canonical standard, as it is just a set > of optional text conventions. Maybe if successful it could be a set of > common conventions that are becoming adopted, and a good practice. It > codifies things that are emerging as common conventions we see in > geminispace, or more widely. For example "standard" names for home page or > ways of communicating comments textually > > => gemini://myowndomain/home.gmi Home > => gemini://xyzdomain/cookery/egg-recipies.gmi Responds to XYZ thoughts on > how to cook eggs > > Or as we already see the use of unicode glyphs to indicate comments such as > the speech bubble ? emoji or house ? for home. > > This is intended to be very lightweight and helpful for readers using simple > command line clients as much as it might be for richer clients who may > provide additional UI. There isnt any overhead for authors apart from > providing these optional hints in their link text, which can help everyone. > > The "responds to" and "has comments" can be used by search crawlers to build > a meta layer of who is commenting on whom within gemini space > > I've put it in Github here: > > https://github.com/LukeEmmet/GeminiLUACH > > Comments and further thoughts welcome > > Best wishes > > - Luke
Ok - fair enough - I like the favicon proposal too. But the favicon.txt proposal means is to choose a single unicode character that is you. Might not work for everyone. The difference between menu and home would be: ? menu is a link to a page containing a *list of links*, which are then presented to assist navigation. In fact there could be more than one menu on a page. It could be presented as an interactive list, or as an embedded list or table. ? home is the singular home page url. Probably what you should get if you click the logo. Probably an author might just choose one for a specific page. Home url is the simplest, menu more sophisticated. We could say that the home page could be inferred from an item in the menu. I think either is fine. - Luke On 04-Jun-2020 16:37, prisonpotato at tilde.team wrote: > I like this idea, with a few exceptions. > For the logo (?) proposal, I like the favicon.txt proposal as a better, > terminal compliant way to solve this problem. > I'm also not sure how the Menu (? ) is different from Home (?).
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