💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~stack › gemlog › 2022-02-09.spartan.gmi captured on 2024-08-31 at 13:04:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-07-22)
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I came across the 'hypothetical', stripped-down protocol called Spartan. I liked it, but as it was not 'real', I did some other things. Turns out Spartan is not so hypothetical, and there are a handful of servers out there.
I love the idea of basically Gemini, but without the TLS crap. You lose some privacy and someone could be f**king with your plaintext transmission, but you gain simplicity, and really, what is it we write about here that need military-grade encryption?
The protocol is actually much simpler than Gemini - there are only 4 possible single-digit responses. Great.
There is a nicer interface for getting text from the user. Check.
The request specifies how many bytes are being uploaded (normally 0). You can just upload stuff. Me want!
There is not much out there - a few bash and python 'clients' that are really just fetchers. I sat down and wrote a C implementation of such a fetcher, and it works.
https://tildegit.org/stack/spb
If you want a barebones way to look at Spartan sites or integrate it into some script, there you go. It's 15KB. It's a jumping point for making something beefier.
Why would I want Spartan? I want to try out a bunch of ideas and services, but I don't want to mess with TLS right now.