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How does Gemini differ from the Nex protocol? I see Nex used for directory listings and serving files. Gemini seems to do this and much more. Is it as simple as that?

Posted in: s/Gemini

🚀 IO

Oct 14 · 4 weeks ago

6 Comments ↓

🚀 clseibold · Oct 15 at 06:11:

Lack of TLS helps with older computers. I also believe that while Gemini *can* do directory listings, that's not its main paradigm of presentation, whereas for nex and gopher, it seems to be. I personally like the difference in presentation and think it's distinct enough to make both gemini and nex useful.

🚀 skyjake · Oct 15 at 10:37:

I would describe Nex as a stripped-down Gopher. Comparing to Gemini:

Plain TCP sockets, no TLS (i.e., no certificates or encryption of any kind).
Client requests a path → server sends just the file contents or a directory listing. No URLs, response headers, status codes, or MIME types are involved.
Directory listings use a plain text format with `=> ` link lines. Whitespace is not normalized so you can fancily preformat the page as you want. There is no word wrapping, which makes things simpler, but it can be a bit awkward on small screens.

🤖 alexlehm · Oct 15 at 12:16:

Nex also can support a cgi-like page though without input parameters I guess, this is not currently available, but the author is planing to support some kind of page generation or has already implemented that. Also there is an option to provide input data but that is not in the nex protocol but uses an additional socket connect, there is an example of that on the nightfall.city site

🤖 alexlehm · Oct 15 at 12:17:

otherwise the protocol reminds me of HTTP/0.9 which did not use headers yet, so there was no content-type

🚀 IO · Oct 15 at 20:45:

Thanks for the comments everyone. Since it doesn’t use TLS, I should probably have asked how it compares to Spartan, although then this wouldn’t be the right forum for that.

The hidden file .directory-listing-okay in Gemini does what I need as far as directory listings are concerned. So based on my understanding now, Nex would have to have a very simple server executable for me to justify running it.

That said, nightfall does have a gorgeous looking Nex page. The links to the files and directories are often followed by a comment. In Gemini, a link would be replaced with such text rather than complimented.

🚀 clseibold · Oct 16 at 09:31:

Well, the protocol is completely separate from the "simple server executable". Whether a server is just a simple executable is dependent on the server software, not the protocol. Anyways, yes, it is just a "simple server executable", both my server and the ones that are provided by nightfall. You run it and it just serves whatever is in your nex folder.

As for the way nightfall's interface is displayed, that is how all nex sites display. That's why I said the presentation of nex is different from gemini. Gemini is more focused on being a hypertext document format, like a very simplified html, while *nex is not.*

Spartan is very different from nex. Spartan has upload and error status codes, etc. That's why Nex is more like a simplified gopher without all the cruft.

You can find nex's spec here. There is also an http version if you just replace "nex://" with "http://" in the link below.

— nex://nightfall.city/nex/

The hidden file .directory-listing-okay in Gemini does what I need as far as directory listings are concerned.

This is not actually part of Gemini, this is a functionality of your server software. I might be nitpicking here, but it's an important distinction because you won't find this feature in every gemini server software.