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Hi friends! My Gemini station has successfully reached its orbit at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ 🚀 The interior is still a bit spartan, but offers a few useful things about Unicode and CGI programming. New modules are already being built and will be docked shortly. Have fun! Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think the idea is to put a single character, emoji or otherwise, in /favicon.txt to be displayed as your capsule’s favicon in browsers that support it. This is analogous to /favicon.ico on the Web. I’m not aware of any formal standard so I guess it’s more of a convention, at least for the time being. In any case, a missing /favicon.txt is no crime. Greg.
Oops, wrong thread. Sorry! Greg.
Hi Friends! as promised, two new modules have docked at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ 🚀 1. 🖨 Large Characters Easily create flashy banner-texts in many different fonts with the this utility: It reads your text and prints it out in all 290 installed character-sets, ready for you to copy and past into your own page. ➡ gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/figlet 2. 📦 Text in a Box Similar to the Large Characters, this utility surrounds your text with a more or less sophisticated box, drawn with ASCII-characters. ➡ gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes More modules are already under construction 🏗 and will dock soon! Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, 2021-05-18, Frank Jüdes wrote: > 1. 🖨 Large Characters > Easily create flashy banner-texts in many different fonts with the > this utility: It reads your text and prints it out in all 290 > installed character-sets, ready for you to copy and past into your > own page. ➡ gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/figlet Nice. Similar to https://www.patorjk.com/software/taag/ But using ASCII-art and stylized Unicode characters has accessibility implications that have been discussed at length on this list [1] and elsewhere [2]. The output of your Unicode Text Converter [3] doesn't play well with screen readers, so please add a notice pointing this out. Also, it's good practice to label preformatted blocks that contain ASCII art in the same way you would add an "alt" attribute to an HTML <img> tag. Example: ``` ASCII-art text: "test" _ _ | |_ ___ ___| |_ | __/ _ \/ __| __| | || __/\__ \ |_ \__\___||___/\__| ``` [1] gemini://gemi.dev/gemini-mailing-list/messages/005631.gmi [2] gemini://ew.srht.site/en/2021/20210411-upd-re-your-gemlog-may-not-be-accessible.gmi [3] gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/UnicodeText
1) Yes, similar to that web-site, but i was more inspired by remembering the good ol' FidoNet, where there was a service available that converted a text that you mailed to it into large banners and mailed them back to you. Very funny in the '90s where the internet was something for "scientists" and "nerds"… I did not know that it is possible to label pre-formatted paragraphs (should have read the protocol spec more thoroughly 😊), but it totally makes sense and i have changed the Large Characters and the Box-Tool to add labels to the pre-tags, like this: > ## 📦 Design: "capgirl" > ``` ASCII-art text: "Another Visitor!\nStay a While...\nStay FOREVER!" > 2) Yeah: The dreaded Unicode! I am so *done* with that discussion! 😠 The first version of Unicode was published in 1991, *30* years ago! The first Emoji symbols were included in 2010, 11 years ago, that should have been enough time for screen-readers or terminal-clients to implement an adequate handling. Every Unicode character is registered in the Unicode Database <https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/search.htm?q=duck&p review=entity> with a formal name and a description, which could be used by a screen-reader to say something like »Pictogram of a DUCK«. I am not experienced with screen-readers or braille terminals, but how would those deal with for example fractions ½ ¼ ¾ ? It is similar with the bold or italic Unicode characters, they have descriptive names like »MATHEMATICAL*BOLD*CAPITAL A«, so a screen-reader could very well understand "bold" text and act accordingly. Heck! Even the dreaded Windows *notepad.exe* can display Unicode characters without problems now! (If the font-permits!) 👌 I do understand, however that many people wish to use terminal-like clients like amfora or the new Romulus client and those indeed have a real problem with most Unicode characters. I assume this is more of a problem with the Windows terminal-emulation and M$ is already working to fix this (see: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-command-line-unico de-and-utf-8-output-text-buffer/ ), at least some Unicode can be displayed by amfora and Romulus, for example the tables do work (see: gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/DBTableTest/orcl/SHADOW/Y ). As a compromise, i have removed all Unicode "formatted" text from my capsule, except for the eye-candy symbols. Those will stay because all the graphical browsers i have tested have no issues with those (OK, Geminaut has some…) and they actually bare no additional information, they just make the text a bit more nicer to look at. BTW: The Gemini protocol definition is very explicit in the use of the UTF-8 encoding (see: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi 3.3 Response bodies) > If a MIME type begins with "text/" and no charset is explicitly given,
Hi friends! sorry for the non-functional box utility! /boxes/ is using the file //usr/share/boxes/boxes/ on my development-system (Oracle Linux 7.9) to store the box design-definitions, whereas on the production-server (Centos 8.2) the filename is//usr/share/boxes/ instead. Had to add a couple of lines to the perl program to determine the correct filename and now it works: gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes/Another%20visitor!%5CnStay %20a%20while...%5Cnstay%20FOREVER!!! 📦 Design: "nuke" _ ._ _ , _ ._ (_ ' ( ` )_ .__) ( ( ( ) `) ) _) (__ (_ (_ . _) _) ,__) `~~`\ ' . /`~~` ,::: ; ; :::, ':::::::::::::::' _jgs______/_ __ \__________ | | | Another visitor! | | Stay a while... | | stay FOREVER!!! | |___________________________| Already in the shipyard are the modules for number-conversions (Dec/Hex/Oct/Bin/...), URL (un-)quote, Binary to text encoding (uuencode, baseXX, etc), Hashes Stay in orbit! Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 On 2021-05-18 23:39, Frank Jüdes wrote: > > Hi Friends! > > as promised, two new modules have docked at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ 🚀 > > 1. 🖨 Large Characters > Easily create flashy banner-texts in many different fonts with the > this utility: It reads your text and prints it out in all 290 > installed character-sets, ready for you to copy and past into your > own page. ➡ gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/figlet > 2. 📦 Text in a Box > Similar to the Large Characters, this utility surrounds your text > with a more or less sophisticated box, drawn with > ASCII-characters. ➡ gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes > > More modules are already under construction 🏗 and will dock soon! > > Best regards from Charleston (WV), > Frank/2 > > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frank Jüdes 2814 Four Mile Road Charleston, WV 25312, USA Cell: +1-713-885-4421 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20 May 2021 05:14:12 BST, "Frank Jüdes" <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> wrote: >2) Yeah: The dreaded Unicode! > >I am so *done* with that discussion! 😠 You clearly are not :D :D :D
Frank Jüdes writes:
> The first version of Unicode was published in 1991, 30 years ago! The
> first Emoji symbols were included in 2010, 11 years ago, that should
> have been enough time for screen-readers or terminal-clients to
> implement an adequate handling. Every Unicode character is registered
> in the Unicode Database with a formal name and a description, which
> could be used by a screen-reader to say something like »Pictogram of a
> DUCK«. I am not experienced with screen-readers or braille terminals,
> but how would those deal with for example fractions ½ ¼ ¾ ?
My understanding is that screen readers *do* handle things like emoji
and mathematical characters, but it's annoying. Having a link text be
"ROCKET EMOJI My new capsule" is not bad, but consider a bunch of emojis
in a row, being read out to you by name, probably sped up 3x... Then
it's worse with aesthetic text, because something like "ℌ𝔬𝔲𝔰𝔢 𝔬𝔣
𝔐𝔶𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔶" doesn't become "House of Mystery" or "Fraktur text: House of
Mystery", it becomes "MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR CAPITAL H MATHEMATICAL
FRAKTUR SMALL O MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR SMALL U MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR SMALL
S...." and so on. This is, arguably, a defect in current screen
readers, but it's also a misuse of Unicode characters for styling.
And if the screen readers adapted to that use of Unicode, what would
they make of "ಠ_ಠ"? Should they be prepared to read it as "Look of
Disapproval" rather than "KANNADA LETTER TTHA SPACING UNDERSCORE KANNADA
LETTER TTHA"? What about "(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻"?
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like to be able to use these things
too, but when people who use screen readers say they're annoying, I
listen to them. (This is based on what I've heard on the Fediverse; if
I'm wrong about what screen readers do, I'm open to being corrected.)
One option is to wrap studlytext or kaomoji in a preformatted block with
an alt text. That way, screen readers can skip over them if the client
is configured correctly. That means you can't use them inline, but
that's better than nothing.
--
Jason McBrayer | “Strange is the night where black stars rise,
jmcbray@carcosa.net | and strange moons circle through the skies,
| but stranger still is lost Carcosa.”
| ― Robert W. Chambers,The King in Yellow
On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 12:36:20AM -0400, Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> wrote a message of 208 lines which said: > sorry for the non-functional box utility! /boxes/ is using the file > //usr/share/boxes/boxes/ on my development-system (Oracle Linux 7.9) to > store the box design-definitions, whereas on the production-server (Centos > 8.2) the filename is//usr/share/boxes/ instead. Had to add a couple of lines > to the perl program to determine the correct filename and now it works: It fails for Unicode characters. I input "deux cafés" in Lagrange and I get mojibake "deux cafés" <gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes/Deux%20cafés,%20pour%20moi>
Hi Stephane, i have not (yet) figured out how to convert multi-byte characters from URL-encoding back into in the correct Unicode characters in Perl. There are a couple of Perl packages claiming to be able to to that, but the two i have tested didn't work correct with all characters, for example the German Umlauts äöü are working fine, but the sharp s (ß) does not. - Work in progress… Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 On 2021-05-30 04:28, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 12:36:20AM -0400, > Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> wrote > a message of 208 lines which said: > >> sorry for the non-functional box utility! /boxes/ is using the file >> //usr/share/boxes/boxes/ on my development-system (Oracle Linux 7.9) to >> store the box design-definitions, whereas on the production-server (Centos >> 8.2) the filename is//usr/share/boxes/ instead. Had to add a couple of lines >> to the perl program to determine the correct filename and now it works: > It fails for Unicode characters. I input "deux cafés" in Lagrange and > I get mojibake "deux cafés" > <gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes/Deux%20cafés,%20pour%20moi> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/
Hi Frank, Im planning on experimenting with the Shavian and Quickscript alphabets next year. I guess my chances arent very good for Gemini :( Jonathan Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> writes: > Hi Stephane, > > i have not (yet) figured out how to convert multi-byte characters from > URL-encoding back into in the correct Unicode characters in > Perl. There are a couple of Perl packages claiming to be able to to > that, but the two i have tested didn't work correct with all > characters, for example the German Umlauts äöü are working fine, but > the sharp s (ß) does not. - > Work in progress… > > Best regards from Charleston (WV), > Frank/2 > > On 2021-05-30 04:28, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: >> On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 12:36:20AM -0400, >> Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> wrote >> a message of 208 lines which said: >> >>> sorry for the non-functional box utility! /boxes/ is using the file >>> //usr/share/boxes/boxes/ on my development-system (Oracle Linux 7.9) to >>> store the box design-definitions, whereas on the production-server (Centos >>> 8.2) the filename is//usr/share/boxes/ instead. Had to add a couple of lines >>> to the perl program to determine the correct filename and now it works: >> It fails for Unicode characters. I input "deux cafés" in Lagrange and >> I get mojibake "deux cafés" >> <gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes/Deux%20cafés,%20pour%20moi> -- Jonathan McHugh indieterminacy@libre.brussels
Shavian should be just fine as long as you're willing to have your URLs be in en-Latn instead of en-Shaw. Of course, your text will be at the mercy of everyone's clients and their font-substitution systems since you can't just ship Noto Sans Shavian as a webfont and call it a day. en-Shaq*, though? _Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate_. You'd be better off taking pictures of handwritten notes and uploading them as JPEGs. Maybe use your phone's document-camera feature if you're into that and have it generate PDFs of your handwriting.
Hi Stephane again, the issue with the Unicode characters is fixed. - At least half way... - It works for diacritic characters, like the "ü" in my lastname: . . | . \ | / '. \ ' / .' '. .'```'. .' <>...:::::::`.......`:::::::..<> <>: Frank Jüdes :<> <>:..........................:<> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> But it will not work with other Unicode characters, for example emoticons: . . | . \ | / '. \ ' / .' '. .'```'. .' <>...:::::::`.......`:::::::..<> <>: Frank Jüdes is a 🦆 :<> <>:..........................:<> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> The string-length of multibyte-characters is not calculated correctly by the /boxes/ program. Its a problem with the /boxes/ program that i cannot fix. 😟 Can you please check your string again and tell me if it works now? - Thank you very much in advance for your help. Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 On 2021-05-30 07:51, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 01:38:54PM +0200, > Almaember<almaember@disroot.org> wrote > a message of 21 lines which said: > >> The web however has a Length header in HTTP. The point isn't to perform >> overly complicated checks, but to be able to somewhat tell if the whole file >> got transferred successfully. > Since Gemini requires TLS, the proper solution is to require an > explicit TLS close > <https://gitlab.com/gemini-specification/protocol/-/issues/2>. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@edv-service-juedes.com <mailto:Frank.Juedes@edv-service-juedes.com>> On 2021-05-30 04:28, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 12:36:20AM -0400, > Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> wrote > a message of 208 lines which said: > >> sorry for the non-functional box utility! /boxes/ is using the file >> //usr/share/boxes/boxes/ on my development-system (Oracle Linux 7.9) to >> store the box design-definitions, whereas on the production-server (Centos >> 8.2) the filename is//usr/share/boxes/ instead. Had to add a couple of lines >> to the perl program to determine the correct filename and now it works: > It fails for Unicode characters. I input "deux cafés" in Lagrange and > I get mojibake "deux cafés" > <gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes/Deux%20cafés,%20pour%20moi> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oracle <http://www.oracle.com> Frank Jüdes | Senior Principal Consultant | +1.713.885.4421 Oracle America Inc. 1200 Smith Street, Suite 1500 Houston, TX 77002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Stephane again, the issue with the Unicode characters is fixed. - At least half way... - It works for diacritic characters, like the "ü" in my lastname: . . | . \ | / '. \ ' / .' '. .'```'. .' <>...:::::::`.......`:::::::..<> <>: Frank Jüdes :<> <>:..........................:<> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> But it will not work with other Unicode characters, for example emoticons: . . | . \ | / '. \ ' / .' '. .'```'. .' <>...:::::::`.......`:::::::..<> <>: Frank Jüdes is a 🦆 :<> <>:..........................:<> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> The string-length of multibyte-characters is not calculated correctly by the /boxes/ program. Its a problem with the /boxes/ program that i cannot fix. 😟 Can you please check your string again and tell me if it works now? - Thank you very much in advance for your help. Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 On 2021-05-30 07:51, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: > On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 01:38:54PM +0200, > Almaember<almaember@disroot.org> wrote > a message of 21 lines which said: > >> The web however has a Length header in HTTP. The point isn't to perform >> overly complicated checks, but to be able to somewhat tell if the whole file >> got transferred successfully. > Since Gemini requires TLS, the proper solution is to require an > explicit TLS close > <https://gitlab.com/gemini-specification/protocol/-/issues/2>. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@edv-service-juedes.com <mailto:Frank.Juedes@edv-service-juedes.com>>
Hi Jonathan, on the contrary! There is a code block for Shavian available in the Unicode characterset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_(Unicode_block) And for quickscript there is an open proposal from 2006: https://www.mail-archive.com/shavian@yahoogroups.com/msg00178.html I don't know why that proposal has not been included into the current Unicode specs, but i'm sure with a little bit of pressure it will be in the future. Best regards from Charleston (WV), Frank/2 On 2021-06-01 13:41, Jonathan McHugh wrote: > Hi Frank, > > Im planning on experimenting with the Shavian and Quickscript alphabets > next year. > > I guess my chances arent very good for Gemini :( > > > Jonathan > > Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> writes: > >> Hi Stephane, >> >> i have not (yet) figured out how to convert multi-byte characters from >> URL-encoding back into in the correct Unicode characters in >> Perl. There are a couple of Perl packages claiming to be able to to >> that, but the two i have tested didn't work correct with all >> characters, for example the German Umlauts äöü are working fine, but >> the sharp s (ß) does not. - >> Work in progress… >> >> Best regards from Charleston (WV), >> Frank/2 >> >> On 2021-05-30 04:28, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: >>> On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 12:36:20AM -0400, >>> Frank Jüdes <Frank.Juedes@linux4specialists.com> wrote >>> a message of 208 lines which said: >>> >>>> sorry for the non-functional box utility! /boxes/ is using the file >>>> //usr/share/boxes/boxes/ on my development-system (Oracle Linux 7.9) to >>>> store the box design-definitions, whereas on the production-server (Centos >>>> 8.2) the filename is//usr/share/boxes/ instead. Had to add a couple of lines >>>> to the perl program to determine the correct filename and now it works: >>> It fails for Unicode characters. I input "deux cafés" in Lagrange and >>> I get mojibake "deux cafés" >>> <gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/boxes/Deux%20cafés,%20pour%20moi> > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oracle <http://www.oracle.com> Frank Jüdes | Senior Principal Consultant | +1.713.885.4421 Oracle America Inc. 1200 Smith Street, Suite 1500 Houston, TX 77002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Fri, Jun 04, 2021 at 04:13:38PM -0400, Frank Juedes <frank.juedes@oracle.com> wrote a message of 479 lines which said: > the issue with the Unicode characters is fixed. - At least half way... - It > works for diacritic characters, like the "ü" in my lastname: Indeed, it now works, thanks. > The string-length of multibyte-characters is not calculated correctly by the > /boxes/ program. Its a problem with the /boxes/ program that i cannot fix. :-(
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