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I have a fool question for those that understand the protocol better: Would be possible to implement an Imageboard over Gemini, like 4chan?
Sep 06 · 3 months ago · 👍 AlbertLarsan68, HanzBrix
What is an Imageboard?
Not if you expect to show the image and the text in the same view. Also there would be no way, using nothing but gemini, to upload the actual image.
It's possible.
You would require support for the titan protocol to upload images, or you could let people upload images by entering a link to the image and have your board software fetch that like I do for the textart tool.
I think I threw the code up for free too, so you could also convert incoming pictures to unicode text art for previews and then let people click through to see the actual image.
I remember a gopher image board, if you can code it, it can work. Yes the upload is a problem, but using a URL like previously mentioned works well too. You can also have a pubnix with ssh where people can post.. many ways, just maybe a tad more challenging than simply http form upload and displaying
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 07 at 08:12:
I've adapted before years ago an open imageboard that worked only with HTML, but I'm figuring if it would work in gemini. A lot of friends here pointed that it would be needed to use Titan and other things, I'm thinking I would need to program from scratch now and sincerely it may be beyound my capacity for now.
But if you say someone did it before using gopher, I may search a little and take a look, maybe there is an useful piece of code ready to adapt.
It is like a forum where you often answer with images. 4chan is an example.
We used it a lot on the webs before social media evolved.
Would it be possible? Yeah, kinda, but you would have to load images manually always, so you’d have to click a link — unless you embed colour ANSI art thumbnails as plaintext.
SHOULD it be possible? Image boards are a cesspit leading straight to hell and nothing good ever comes from them. So a hard no. 😀
Now you are just tempting me to make a catch all server where anything after the TLD sends you to an ANSI animation rickroll.
Edit: Oh look, someone already did the hard part. You just need the server to passthru the output of this command as a stream.
curl -sN http://rick.jachan.dev
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 07 at 10:55:
This INDEED seems very interesting. It may be repurposed for video streaming, with lower bandwidth perhaps?
The "curl -sN http://rick.jachan.dev | bash " gives you even sound.
The payload of ANSI codes needed to set the color of every pixel is hardly something I would consider “low bandwidth”.
For comparison, convert an 80x40 pixel PNG to ANSI art and see the difference in file sizes. Now picture that for every frame. And now remember that unlike streaming video formats there is no compression or optimization. Video formats do things like only update that parts of the image that are moving.
It’s huge and wasteful. That makes it perfect for having a laugh, but there’s a reason you have never seen anything useful done with it.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 07 at 10:59:
What about something more akin to a capsule or a BBS but with the possibility to embed an small image (untill 100kb) through spartan, instead just links?
I understand some people don't like imageboards, anonimate feeds the worst in mankind. But I still remember nostalgically the times of my youth when the internet started and we used these instead Orkut and so, so I wanted to give it somehow a try.
So... Why you recommended the idea?
Is more useful to pure images?
The discussion was about image boards. Requiem said nothing good has ever come out of image boards.
Every Internet meme of the last 20 years started on image boards. If you tell me they are horrible and should never exist in Gemini, that just makes me want to do it all the more.
Make a server that rickrolls people in ANSI. Make a radio station that plays nothing but “Sandstorm” but calls it whatever song people are looking for. Make an image board where everything is converted to ANSI art.
Wasteful and stupid is part of having fun. And if you aren’t having fun on the Internet, why be here?
Telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl or listen to a dot matrix printer playing the “Blue Danube” or see DOOM running on a pregnancy tester and tell me this isn’t the hacker spirit.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 07 at 11:15:
You have a good point. Memes give the web a bit of color and flavor.
You remembered me now of the dot matrix Eye of a Tiger i`ve seen in the start of the year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8I6qt_Z0Cg
And then you can take it to the extreme.
https://youtu.be/zRDFjvLuUAk
This is better. It’s even wasting meters of filament and more electricity (heat) for the lulz.
https://youtu.be/cVSwMiz8_Ko
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 07 at 11:37:
This is a pure masterpiece. Kinda remembered me a vocaloid.
Thank you for sharing.
So if you want me to write a basic image board in gemini, how much like 4chan are you looking for?
Do you want it to do something like generate tripcodes from a user certificate, and posting without a cert is going full anon?
Guessing just have a table of certs that are mod/admin status to either add remove links when viewing the board.
Would need to make a series of prompts that slowly build out a query string. First it asks for message content, then it prompts for an image link to include. Canceling the image link would result in a text only post.
For display, show the first 10 posts in each board and the first 3 replies to each post. Follow post link to view the full thread.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 07 at 17:55:
I really don't necessarily want YOU to write. I was just guessing if it was possible to implement something like this in gemini, because I once deployed on my site a model mostly based on html.
I just wanted a platform with more images, where images are the focus - and people could interact. Because I rarely see images here.
In my opinion, tripcodes are a must, so people can reference what other people are talking and answer in a big conversation... But anonimate is not essential. I think a lot of scumbags use anonimate to troll, so It is not the main focus. Like a gopher chan I used once, but maybe using Titan to directly upload an small sized image.
It’s about a two hour job to make the basics of a -chan bird for gemini, and probably a bit longer to add titan uploading later. I think the idea of converting all incoming images to ANSI is pretty cool.
If this is something anyone would use I’d happily buy a domain name and make it, just to expand gemini offerings.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 08 at 16:54:
I know is cool to convert images to ANSI, but I keep thinking if this is really necessary. It would be for bandwith saving or just because gopher-like retro style purposes?
Istvan, what do you think about this gopher imageboard?
gopher://khzae.net:70/1/chan
It costs more bandwidth to send ansi than it does PNG by far.
I’m about 80% done. Just finishing some last db work and making sure inputs are sanitized and cleaned up and any warnings are properly handled.
Should be up this week.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 08 at 18:59:
So... I think there is really no need to ANSI, at least in my point of view. Or to give people the chance to choose normal image or ANSI.
The idea was more to "develop" a bit of the graphic side in gemini, give it more color etc, without compromising to much bandwith and space. But if it is the same I don't think there is a need to all the effort put in converting, I dunno.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 08 at 19:00:
If you do, please create a github to the project. I am not very versed in coding, but I can at least try to help a bit.
It depends on the size of the image. A 400KB-4MB JPEG might go down to 50KB of ANSI. Smaller images might end up bigger.
I don't have it working yet, but the plan is to use subdomain filtering to decide what to deliver. The default is ANSI, but acessing from the ascii.* subdomain would deliver ASCII art instead, which is much smaller.
Both can participate in the same board. It's just a question of which payload people want.
I suppose I could also add a null.* subdomain that removes all image display and only shows links.
It's all working off the same board and same database, it's just the user choosing what to see and me choosing the default.
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Sep 09 at 05:04:
I think that a image size should not be beyound 100 or 200k jpeg. I usually compress quality and achieve for most images less than that. And it someone would want to use it in a 2.5G grps connection or an older computer, I think it would help to generate the page faster depending the quantity of nested replies in the same page.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to degrade the original files to that degree. There could be people wanting to share their photography or 4K wallpapers.
I think an <40K ansi preview or <6K ascii preview followed by a link to open the original image is the way to go.
I will add a file size indicator to the image link so people can decide whether they want to commit to the data download based on the preview and post text.
Was this ever finished? I don't see any comments since September...
🦁 Houjimmy [OP] · Dec 14 at 10:49:
Unfortunally, I don't know.
☯️ dragfyre · Dec 14 at 12:05:
@istvan was around recently iirc.
also, i must have missed this thread. an imageboard that previews images in ascii/ansi art? that is *amazing*.