Michael Lazar lazar.michael22 at gmail.com
Wed Jan 15 05:03:28 GMT 2020
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ``` On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 1:43 PM solderpunk <solderpunk at sdf.org> wrote: > > Okay, I have started to re-engage with this endless discussion - > slowly and, I have to admit, reluctantly. When I think about how many > details there are to consider here, how many different options we have > to choose among, and how absolutely incredible the power-to-weight > ratio is of verbatim fixed-width text with a predefined width (I > mean, really, you can: > > Left align text, > center text, > even right align text > > without the client having to even know what those things are!), it's > incredibly tempting to echo the "reflowed text be damned!" sentiment > recently expressed at mozz.us[1] and spec 40 character fixed text and > just move on. For what it's worth, I have been tryingout the 40-character width thing for awhile now and I'm really enjoying it! Iactually find it a lot more pleasant totype vs 80 character lines. I don't knowif it's because my eyes don't need tojump as far, or because it takes fewerkeystrokes to move my cursor to themiddle of a line... Something about itjust *feels* good to type. Not to mention, pages like this [1]display perfectly on my iphone using agemini-http proxy server. Regardless ofwhether you choose to adopt the ```mode, you're still going to need torecommend a line length for authors tohard wrap their text/gemini files at.And I suggest that 40 is still worthconsidering for this. > Gopher is better than the current Gemini spec in this regard, because > you can put gophermap lines in an item type 0 text file no problem and > they'll just be displayed as-is. But copying and pasting that > gophermap is not guaranteed to go smoothly. With terminal-based > applications, the tabs would stand a good chance of being transformed > into consecutive spaces, which would actually break them. Let's be > better than that! Let's make it possible to display, copy and paste > Gemini links inside of Gemini documents, to facilitate teaching and > talking about Gemini over Gemini. It seems quite natural that this > should be possible. > > Even if text/gemini were specced at 40 fixed-width characters with no > reflow, meeting this goal would require some syntax comparable to > <pre> tags in HTML, to switch off processing of Gemini links. If > we're going to have that anyway, we may as well have reflowed text be > the default and this <pre> syntax can do double duty by also enabling > non-reflowed text for source code, poetry, etc. Here are some other alternatives thatmight be worth considering. I do thinkthat displaying gemini links is a validuse-case, but adding a whole newpreformatted text mode only for thisnarrow case feels a bit heavy-handed tome. Granted, I realize there are otherbenefits to the preformatted mode thathave already been outlined. Option 1. Use a no-op link Pick a URL that by convention doesn'tlead anywhere useful, and then hijackthe (link friendly name) portion todisplay your gemini link. = ># = >/about.txt About "#" is a valid relative URL, right?Somebody else on this list *cough* seanmight be able to some up with somethingbetter. This would be displayed onmost gemini clients as: = >/about.txt About The line would be highlighted as a link(unless clients choose to handle thisspecial case), but otherwise it shouldwork without any changes to the spec. Option 2. Use text/plain For the narrow use-case where you wantto show off some examples of geminilinks, stick those links in a separatetext/plain document. Or just serve yourwhole page as text/plain. The examplelinks can't intermingle with real geminilinks in the same document, but is thatreally such a big deal? How you feel about this option likelydepends on which side of the fence youfall on regarding text/gemini usage.Should text/gemini be used like HTML ison the web, with most content beingwritten as gemini files? Or should it bemore like gopher, where directories aretype text/gemini but many people writetheir blog posts and other leafdocuments as text/plain. Lately I have been leaning more towardsthe second interpretation. Take anotherexample: Instead of writing a pythoncode snippet inline in a text/geminidocument, what if you instead added alink to your code snippet and served itas "text/x-python"? This feels naturalto me given that other media contentlike images also can't be displayedinline. [1] https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/mozz.us/diagnostics/2020-01-08/notes.gmi - mozz