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teletext-ish pages?

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From: <joe@example.invalid>

Subject: teletext-ish pages?

Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2022 06:49:40 -0000 (UTC)

Message-ID: <svpoe2$1l34$1@gioia.aioe.org>

Message content

I've never used gemini, I've never used teletext either. I have used

gopher.

As I read this group, and consider my own needs and how I'd be likely to

use it (if I ever do) a couple things come up.

Seems like it could have been a good way to view texinfo pages, manpages

and possibly even vim help files. It would be pretty neat to design a

text-only wiki. I really like that it works in a terminal.

Having tools that generate gemini pages, instead of HTML, from code the

way DoxyGen does seems like it would have been a major boost for gemini,

but the SSL requirement really breaks a lot of stuff.

I'd also like to see support for color.

ANSI colors, unicode artwork, Nerd artists

------------------------------------------

Color and ascii art would likely attract an audience that I think is

often overlooked: Nerd artists and people into crafts.

Ascii (well, unicode really) art with unicode can be very, very

impressive and quite artistic. If it were possible to add color, this

would totally rock. (it would also really suck for blind people, but you

could, and should, wrap it in ``` anyway. Blind readers could skip that)

Petscii is still a thing in some circles. There are ascii art contests

that still take place. To be truly impressive, they need color support.

Don't get me wrong, there are times when I'd want to turn the color off.

Blue background with white text would give me a major headache, for

example. (but this could be done via the terminal emulator)

If you support unicode, (via the terminal) this shouldn't be that much

harder. The terminal does all the work. The challenge would be malware

that sends escape codes to bugger up the screen. (even then, the worst

that could happen is you need to do a screen reset. Hardly a big deal)

Teletext

--------

I've never used teletext, I've read about it though. There are quite a

few people who miss it. They sound a lot like gopher users who prefer

the simple interface.

Teletext was an old protocol for television sets that allowed you to

view news pages, weather, etc.. in a semi-textual format.

Pages were accessed by number, expensive television sets had memory that

could cache the pages while other less expensive units would have to

wait until the page number was rebroadcast. The page would load on your

television set. It's an old technology.

I could easily see designing a teletext type of client for gemini but

color is important. Teletext DID have graphics, implemented via a kind

of escape code into an alternate character set of blocky characters, not

unlike commodore graphics. Unicode could probably do this too.

SSL is a deal breaker

---------------------

Imagine what a flop UNIX would have been if 'grep', 'awk', 'sed'

required all their input to be encrypted.

Unix was a big success in part because the commands don't actually care

where the input is coming from.

Being transport-agnostic would have allowed gemini to function from a

simple perl script server feeding gemini pages from a zip file over a

pipe. SSL breaks a whole host of neat things you could do like that.

(atom feeds that supply pages ala teletext above, even email could be

the basis of a teletext content delivery system .. if not for the SSL

stuff)

Gopher is one of those things the tor network likes because of the

privacy features and because a lot of hidden onion sites are running on

peoples home computers with limited resources. Since you'd be running

over onion anyway, encryption is redundant.

I could really see gemini taking off over tor, SSL is very unfortunate

IMO.

Overall I'd say this is a pretty nifty project, I hope the developers

will consider my input, because I think there is an audience of people

you may not have thought about who would really appreciate it:

Artists, teletext users and tor hidden services.

Related

Children:

Re: teletext-ish pages? (by Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> on Thu, 3 Mar 2022 10:59:36 -0000 (UTC))

Re: teletext-ish pages? (by news@zzo38computer.org.invalid on Thu, 03 Mar 2022 11:17:04 -0800)

Re: teletext-ish pages? (by Gustaf Erikson <gerikson@gmial.com> on Sat, 05 Mar 2022 21:51:38 +0100)

Re: teletext-ish pages? (by void@bozo.null on Tue, 15 Mar 2022 20:48:34 -0000 (UTC))

Re: teletext-ish pages? (by meff <email@example.com> on Wed, 16 Mar 2022 01:33:46 GMT)