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⬅️ Previous capture (2024-06-16)
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Image Over Wire Zine A one off experiment
Back in the days, we had this thing called paper magazine, which is basically image transferred onto paper. Before web became infested with JavaScript thus became a collection of applications, HTML was essentially an attempt to emulate paper magazine (plus clickable links). These were the golden years of the web. Back then the web was not so heavily monetized and monitored, probably due to the technical limitation of not having JavaScript.
Since around the time of COVID, Gemini and other smallnet protocols are created due to the hopeless outlook of the HTML/CSS/JavaScript web. They are simple and elegent but not without limitations. To achieve this level of simplicity the gemtext for example, did away with the vast majority of mark up syntax of the HTML. As a result, gemtext is very easy to parse. But visual presentation wise, smallnet formats leave much to be desired.
What should we do? By re-extending the gemtext format to include some level of markup capabilities? NO! By doing so we will be re-tracking the path of the decent of the HTML. I think one possible solution to this dilemma is what life forms from the labo are doing. If you haven't come across them, labo is a zine that is published as PDF file. I fully agree with the reasoning behind lab6's PDF is a relatively universal and self-contained format for rich content. There is even a sub-specification for fully free standing PDF file geared towards archival use (IS019005 PDF/A).
But I think PDF ecosystem is still overly complicated. It is probably true that a PDF reader that can only parse PDF/A format could be made more minimal than a full featured PDF reader. But last time a check, installing mupdf on OpenSD still pulls in a lot of dependencies. Yes, OpenBSD packagers tends to compile applications with all the extra features, but you get the idea.
Image over wire, on the other hand is a natural continuation of the printed media. You can have whatever inline pictures and mathematical formulae you want. The best of all, there ts no markup syntax to parse, everything is just pixels. File size can be fairly minimal too.
I created this image with GIMP, I set color space to 8-bit grey scale, Let's see what kind of file size I can achieve.
E=MC2 😺