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[SPEC] Backwards-compatible metadata in Gemini

John Cowan cowan at ccil.org

Thu Feb 25 19:18:17 GMT 2021

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On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 5:24 AM Oliver Simmons <oliversimmo at gmail.com>wrote:

Extensibility *is* an issue with metadata, but this applies to Gemtext

as a whole due to its nature of being text-based, who's to stop
someone from creating a new line type that their client understands?

Ahhhh, you said in one sentence what took me a whole long email.

By the way, thanks for pointing out the ^^^ in your format; I had forgottenthat in the pile of messages.

I hadn't thought about that, a very valid point.
But I think allowing metadata to be mixed in with text, as the other
format allows, is a bigger drawback than enforcing putting it at the
end of files and breaking concatenation.

Since we are both pro-metadata, can you explain to me your reasons why youthink allowing mixture is bad? My arguments are: (a) some metadata belongsat the top for the human's sake, (b) allowing links to carry metadata aboutthe referent is a Good Thing. Note also (in case it got lost) that ^^^ isnot valid within ``` blocks, so you still have to do minimal parsing tofind the metadata.

Look at some recipes on the modern web, or a news article.
Recipes will have a 'backstory', for some reason Margret's cookies
will have a few paragraphs explaining how they improved her life and
how this (bog standard) recipe has descended through her family.

It's fluff, but without fluff there would be no Gemini. :-)

John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.orgBut that, he realized, was a foolish thought; as no one knew better thanhe that the Wall had no other side. --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Wall of Darkness"-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20210225/0323e90b/attachment.htm>