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Proposal to drop double slashes from URL syntax

Nico nico at itwont.work

Tue Feb 9 16:30:12 GMT 2021

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On 09/02/2021 16:12, Daniel Nagy wrote:

Hello,

I want to propose to drop the double slashes from the gemini URL syntax.

The reason for this is that they dont serve any semantic value and while

the

project is still young, I think it could still be changed. So instead of

gemini://example.com

we would have:

gemini:example.com

In fact, Sir Tim Berners-Lee apologized[0] for introducing them in the

http URL

syntax. I see the following advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

- Less typing

- Less wasted screenspace

- Less transfered bytes and less stored bytes on disk and memory

Disadvantages:

- Newcomers might see familiarities with http in the double slashed

syntax and

recognize, that the following token is a hostname, which will be

contacted.

There is a chance that, without the slashes, newcomers might expect

something else than a hostname after the color, although I

personally think

that chance is low.

- Implementations would need to adapt to this and some URL parsers in

their

respective languages might not support the parsing of such syntax.

- Automatic URL detectors, like for example a terminal emulators

where you can

click on a URL and it openes, might have trouble detecting this

URL form and

therefore not recognize links. Those terminal emulators would

need adaption.

Of course, the double slashed syntax could still be supported, but the more

compact format could be encouraged. Any feedback or suggestions would

greatly be

welcomed.

Regards,

Daniel

[0]: https://www.sitepoint.com/sir-tim-berners-lee-http-slashes/I don't really feel like the benefits of this are worth the drawbacks that we would be breaking the URL standard, breaking existing URL-handling libraries, just breaking things for the sake of, what, saving two bytes? I don't think it's worth it. If you want to save screen space, just don't display the gemini://, if you are in a gemini client it is safe to assume you are speaking gemini (many web browsers don't display the "https://" for similar reasons)