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Proposal to drop double slashes from URL syntax

Daniel Nagy danielnagy at posteo.de

Tue Feb 9 19:57:48 GMT 2021

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My initial mail should have made that clearer. I was not talking about removingthe double-slashes of every link you can find in a Gemtext document. I was onlytalking about gemini URI scheme links. http links ( and all other urls ) shouldstay exactly the same as they are.

Also, to my understanding removing them does not violate the standard. Forexample, `tel:+1-816-555-1212` and `magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:...` are valid URIs. AGemini browser might choose to recognize those `tel:` and `magnet:` links and aopen a locally installed VoiP client or Torrent client respectively. My initialassumption was that some of the simpler parsers might not recognize this format.If they adhere to the URI standard it should be fine.

There is some confusion regarding the terms URI and URL. The W3C tries to clearthat up[0]. It used to be that they ment different things in what they call the"classical view" but this difference isn't as dominant anymore in the"contemporary view". In my understanding, a scheme, which would be `gemini:`,can define upon its own what it expects after the colon. You can find moreregistered schemes here[1], some of which require a double-slash, some don't.

Even though the difference seems small, in the amount of links out there I thinkthis small difference can add up.

Best,Daniel

[0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/#uri-partitioning[1]: https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml

PJ vM <pjvm742 at disroot.org> writes:

I want to propose to drop the double slashes from the gemini

URL

syntax.

No.

One of the reasons Gemini uses URLs is because the URL syntax is

a

*standard*. Gemtext allows linking to things that are accessible

through

any other protocol for which there exists a URL scheme. In order

for a

different-protocol link to be handled by a client for that

protocol, it

is important that the link is a valid, standard URL. And it does

not

make sense to use nonstandard fake URLs for gemini links and

real URLs

for other protocols.