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a space case for transparent gemtext compression

Rohan Kumar seirdy at seirdy.one

Sun Jun 20 02:46:13 BST 2021

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On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 02:53:30PM +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 01:13:20PM +0200,
PJ vM <pjvm742 at disroot.org> wrote
I expect authors would indicate this in the link text. So:
=
article.gmi my article
=
article.gmi.gz my article (compressed version)
As an user, my personal opinion is that it is not great UX.

I'd argue that this isn't really a technical issue as much as it is a phrasing issue. Perhaps a better example would be:

# Title
Author Note: this article is quite long; here's a compressed version:
=
compressed.gmi.gz Compressed article
(article continues below)

Gemini clients supporting pagination can support a pref to download only the first $LINES lines of a gemtext file before the user scrolls down. This way, users can choose to open a link to e.g. a compressed copy before the page finishes loading.

I don't think that improving the UX should come at the cost of adding any new features to the spec. This proposed solution may not be "great UX", but it doesn't require adding any new features to clients besides the optional ability to pipe through gunzip, and it's easy enough to navigate for any user capable of navigating Gemini in the language of the capsule in question. Settling on a "good-enough" UX in pursuit of simplicity is one of the main appeals of Gemini; fine UX tuning is better suited for the Web or desktop applications.

This is doubly true since plaintext pages over 30kb (the threshold at which I might consider compression worthwhile) are quite uncommon.

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