Sandra Snan sandra.snan at idiomdrottning.org
Tue Feb 16 20:58:12 GMT 2021
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Luke wrote:
It may seem like there is a "natural" difference between these two URL
forms, but as far as I understand it the semantics of any URL path
segment is opaque and determined by the server. The path is an opaque
string whose semantics is not intrinsically discernable.
There may be no files or directories involved whatsoever. It happens
that there is a simple sort of implementation to serve a folder of files
in this way, but that is by no means a universal URL path semantics that
we can make inferences about.
gemini://server/foo may or may not serve the same content as
gemini://server/foo/ or it can redirect there. Either way it is up to
the server to determine the semantics of the resource.
I don't wanna disagree with someone who is in my own corner on this♥,but…
It's tree semantics, which is evidenced in practice by the way relativelinks work. (Especially since .. and co exist).
A link to bar/baz from gemini://server/foo leads togemini://server/bar/baz while a link to bar/baz fromgemini://server/foo/ leads to gemini://server/foo/bar/baz.
I've now implemented 31s and 301s from the slashed to unslashed so now Ican start using relative links again. Except they'll have to be writtento reflect the reality that /foo is a leaf node and not a directorynode, i.e. the leaf node is no longer a file named "" (the emptystring).
It's also something that might be good to reflect in culture andconvention.
I could see if, for example "gemini://medusae.space/index.gmi?20",instead had the url been gemini://medusae.space/home/cooking/index.gmi,how that would make sense in some way.
I've kept my own web page & capsule having all flat URLs in one hugename space for a while. It's a tradeoff…
Sandra