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Alternative view on embeded media in gemini

There have been many talks about embeded media in gemtext. How it is needed, how it is unneeded, how it is it could be implemented, how it could set gemini on slippery slope that is HTML. I think I have a compromise that will satisfy all parties.

Embeded images

Gemtext does not have a way to embed images. Whether you like it or not, this was done on purpose. To get around that, people started just linking to images in their gemblogs, if they needed to illustrate something. Seeing this, some clients (such as Lagrange) started embeding images into same presented document when user opens a link to image instead of replacing document with it. But I don't think that this has to be limited to just images.

Embeding everything

Forums with tree-structured replies, such as on Usenet or Reddit have a particularly hard time being represented with gemtext. Usually it is structured in a format of first presenting the text or particuar message, and then giving links to messages related to it. This works, but can be somewhat confusing when reading a particularly large thread. But if instead of replacing whole document, user could opt-into embeding text of whatever is on the other side of the link into previous document (which is much more plausable thanks to gemtext line-by-line nature), it open many posibilities.

First of all, now it is possible to represent tree structure with gemini text more efficiently. But also, it allows embeding of not just images, but many other files, such as mathematical formulas, tables, and gemtexts in other languages, later of which is a acknowledged problem with gemtext.

If one wishes to couple gemtext and whatever it is suposed to include by using data:// URI, whether using base64 encoding or not. If such links do not have a label, browsers could automatically expand them, since they are already loaded depending on mime type.

By using such links one could even construct a "spoiler box" that would prevent user from seeing unintended information, or by visually compressing some really long passage.

TL;DR

Sone gemini browsers allow to embed linked images into gemtext. Let's embed other things too.