Ahoy! I have just pushed some changes to the Gemini specification. You can see the new new v0.13.0 spec at:
On 6/7/20 4:27 PM, solderpunk wrote: > The definition of unordered list item lines has been changed so that > they begin not just with "*" but with "* ". > Lines beginning with ">" are now defined to be quote lines, as per > popular demand. Just to be clear, lists have a mandatory space after them, but for quotes and headings and links the whitespace is still set to zero-or-more?
On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 04:41:49PM +0000, James Tomasino wrote: > On 6/7/20 4:27 PM, solderpunk wrote: > > The definition of unordered list item lines has been changed so that > > they begin not just with "*" but with "* ". > > Lines beginning with ">" are now defined to be quote lines, as per > > popular demand. > > Just to be clear, lists have a mandatory space after them, but for > quotes and headings and links the whitespace is still set to zero-or-more? That's how it current is, yeah. This is, indeed, an inconsistency. It arises from the fact that * is the only one of the characters which are significant for determining line types which has a strongly-engrained alternative use which has led to actual erroneous formatting in the wild. We *could* change this. I don't see a really strong argument against it, and consistency is good for learnability. Then again, assuming that clients are stripping leading whitespace from these line types, if people get "the wrong idea" that those spaces are mandatory, it doesn't actually cause any harm. Cheers, Solderpunk
Hi, Thanks for this update! On Sun Jun 7 19:27:23 2020, solderpunk wrote: > The definition of unordered list item lines has been changed so that > they begin not just with "*" but with "* ". This allows the first word > of a regular text line to be *emphasised* in a common fashion without > the line being accidentally considered a list item. GUS data suggests > that everybody, or almost everybody, is already writing their list items > this way, so this should not require any content updates by authors. > See section 5.4.2 for full details. This amendment that prevents conflicts between list items and
On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 09:38:04PM +0300, Frank LENORMAND wrote: > This amendment that prevents conflicts between list items and > *emphasised text* indirectly acknowledges that clients may not > render *emphasised text* verbatim. > > Writers are no longer ensured by the standard that their text surrounded with > asterisks will not be decorated by the client, by extension. Writers were *never* assured by the standard that text surrounded with asterisks would not be decorated by the client! Clients that want to do that can, but it's strictly an optional extra out-of-spec nicety. If anybody wants to do this, the onus is on them to do is smartly enough that it doesn't interfere with the specced use of asterisks for line items. If they mess that up, presumably their users will move to an either less ambitious or better written client which doesn't mangle things. > Are there any plans to mention inline text decoration explicitly in the > specification? If yes, it follows that there should be a way for writers > to escape asterisks around words, in non pre-formatted blocks. There aren't. Even if there were, it wouldn't follow that there would need to be a way to escape them. The spec says "authors should not expect to exercise any control over the precise rendering of their text lines, only of their actual textual content". This extends to not being able to opt out of various optional niceties that clients may choose to implement above and beyond the spec. Authors of text/gemini should never expect to influence the size, weight, colour, font, alignment etc. of any of their text. That's in the client's hands, and that's a good thing. The advanced line types that exist may have common and semi-predictable consequences for stylisastion in extant clients, but the reason they are in there is primarily to give some way to convey important *semantic* information. It's true that the list item type doesn't *quite* live up to that ideal. But I like pretty lists, so... Cheers, Solderpunk
Hello all On 07-Jun-2020 17:27, solderpunk wrote: > The definition of link lines now clarifies that clients "MUST NOT > automatically make any network connections as part of displaying links > whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol (e.g. gemini://, > gopher://, https://, ftp://, etc.)". See section 5.4.2 for full > details. > > <snip> > > IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIENT AUTHORS: > > <snip> > > If your client has been automatically making network connections you > MUST remove this behaviour and atone for your sins! > I think all the changes are sensible, apart from the wording that tries to specify client behaviour. It is not for the spec IMO to prescribe the client behaviour, rather it should specify the exchange format and markup (both of which it does well). If a client must not make subsequent network requests when interpreting a page, does this mean that search engines and crawlers are now non-compliant clients? This seems to go much too far. I would think the "MUST NOT" would be better as a "SHOULD NOT" in case you are adamant to try to shape client behaviour. In my view this is not in scope of a protocol and markup format specification. Also minor point, I would recommend removing the "atone for your sins" sentence as it is overly informal for a spec. I like the explicit requirements covering URL encoding, lang, and bullets. I wonder how authors will reliably signal the language to the server though, particularly as it may be on a page by page basis. Otherwise keep up the good work! Best wishes - Luke
A minor clarification below... On 07-Jun-2020 22:47, Luke Emmet wrote: > Hello all > > On 07-Jun-2020 17:27, solderpunk wrote: >> The definition of link lines now clarifies that clients "MUST NOT >> automatically make any network connections as part of displaying links >> whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol (e.g. gemini://, >> gopher://, https://, ftp://, etc.)". See section 5.4.2 for full >> details. >> >> <snip> >> >> IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIENT AUTHORS: >> >> <snip> >> >> If your client has been automatically making network connections you >> MUST remove this behaviour and atone for your sins! >> > I think all the changes are sensible, apart from the wording that > tries to specify client behaviour. It is not for the spec IMO to > prescribe the client behaviour, rather it should specify the exchange > format and markup (both of which it does well). Sorry, to clarify that particular point, my intended point was that it is not for the spec to prescribe *when* the client makes or does not make its network requests in light of on its interpretation of the textual content. The spec should stick to correct computer to computer exchange (protocol matters) and the markup format (both of which it does well). > > If a client must not make subsequent network requests when > interpreting a page, does this mean that search engines and crawlers > are now non-compliant clients? This seems to go much too far. > > I would think the "MUST NOT" would be better as a "SHOULD NOT" in case > you are adamant to try to shape client behaviour. In my view this is > not in scope of a protocol and markup format specification. > > Also minor point, I would recommend removing the "atone for your sins" > sentence as it is overly informal for a spec. > > I like the explicit requirements covering URL encoding, lang, and > bullets. I wonder how authors will reliably signal the language to the > server though, particularly as it may be on a page by page basis. > > Otherwise keep up the good work! > > Best wishes > > - Luke >
It was thus said that the Great solderpunk once stated: > > IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIENT AUTHORS: > > If your client has been automatically making network connections you > MUST remove this behaviour and atone for your sins! [Citation needed] -spc
On Sun, 07 Jun 2020 21:38:04 +0300 Frank LENORMAND <lenormfml at gmail.com> wrote: > Writers are no longer ensured by the standard that their text > surrounded with asterisks will not be decorated by the client, by > extension. Writer here, but speaking strictly for myself. I don't see a problem with this change. Details below. --- I use asterisks inline for emphasis because that's a habit I've taken from Markdown. My understanding of the standard was that the behavior of inline asterisks (as opposed to asterisks at at the beginning of a line to indicate a list item) is undefined and thus client-dependent. If the client uses them to denote *italics* and **bold**, great. If not, I figure that readers familiar with plain-text email will still interpret such text accordingly. Either way, as a self-hosting writer, my job is to make the words and reliably serve them. What happens on the client side is none of my business. My understanding of the new changes to the standard is that the behavior of inline asterisks is *still* client-dependent. That's fine with me as a writer, TBH. If I wanted the illusion of precise control over how clients render my documents, I'd go back to HTML/CSS--or pick up groff again and just post PDFs. :) -- Matthew Graybosch https://www.matthewgraybosch.com #include <disclaimer.h> gemini://starbreaker.org Harrisburg,PA gemini://demifiend.org "Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."
On Sun, 7 Jun 2020 16:27:23 +0000 solderpunk <solderpunk at SDF.ORG> wrote: > I have just pushed some changes to the Gemini specification. You can > see the new new v0.13.0 spec at: Thanks for the work you've been doing. If you don't mind, I have a couple of questions as a content author. > Perhaps the biggest change, in conceptual terms, is the introduction > of the "lang" parameter for text/gemini. However, most clients will > not need to make any changes whatsoever on account of this. I just read the relevant part of the spec, but I'm still not clear on how I should go about specifying that my text is US English. Do I just have to add "lang=en_US" on the first line of a text/gemini file? > Lines beginning with ">" are now defined to be quote lines, as per > popular demand. This will be handy, but now I'm wondering about pre-formatted quotes (mainly for poetry, song lyrics, screenplays, etc.) For example, if a Gemini content author wanted to quote from a modern poem like T. S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_ and preserve the original formatting, would they do something like this? ``` > "What is that noise?" > The wind under the door. > "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?" > Nothing again nothing. > "Do > "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember > "Nothing?" ``` I suspect that most clients would interpret this block as just pre-formatted text and render it in monospace--which I acknowledge is correct behavior according to the current spec but not necessarily what a content author wants if they decide to load their own page to see how it looks in various clients. Furthermore, looking for quote characters inside a preformatted block and then rendering that block in a variable-width font instead (when applicable) sounds like a good way to introduce bugs. I'd like to suggest instead that we import the | character followed by a space to denote line blocks from reStructuredText as an advanced line type. => https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#line-blocks Of course, I suppose content authors could just use reStructuredText instead, which should probably be the goto format for text that uses footnotes/endnotes as well. -- Matthew Graybosch https://www.matthewgraybosch.com #include <disclaimer.h> gemini://starbreaker.org Harrisburg,PA gemini://demifiend.org "Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."
On 6/7/20 11:06 PM, Matthew Graybosch wrote: > For example, if a Gemini content author wanted to quote from a modern > poem like T. S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_ and preserve the original > formatting, would they do something like this? > > ``` >> "What is that noise?" >> The wind under the door. >> "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?" >> Nothing again nothing. >> "Do >> "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember >> "Nothing?" > ``` > > I suspect that most clients would interpret this block as just > pre-formatted text and render it in monospace--which I acknowledge is > correct behavior according to the current spec but not necessarily what > a content author wants if they decide to load their own page to see how > it looks in various clients. Using the preformatted fences is exactly what you'd want to use. Your example above would preserve whitespace. That's one of the main purposes of the ```. I don't understand the need for an additional line type from your description.
On Sun, 7 Jun 2020 23:18:36 +0000 James Tomasino <tomasino at lavabit.com> wrote: > Using the preformatted fences is exactly what you'd want to use. Your > example above would preserve whitespace. That's one of the main > purposes of the ```. > > I don't understand the need for an additional line type from your > description. I must have been overthinking things, trying to get the best of both worlds: a blockquote that preserves whitespace. Sorry to have wasted people's time. -- Matthew Graybosch https://www.matthewgraybosch.com #include <disclaimer.h> gemini://starbreaker.org Harrisburg,PA gemini://demifiend.org "Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."
On Sun Jun 7, 2020 at 3:06 PM EDT, Matthew Graybosch wrote: > I just read the relevant part of the spec, but I'm still not clear on > how I should go about specifying that my text is US English. Do I just > have to add "lang=en_US" on the first line of a text/gemini file? I'm not sure how other server writers did it but I added "lang" as an option per vhost, currently on the dev branch. I've suggested adding "lang" to the first line before[1] but I need to reread that discussion to see if anyone else commented on it. [1] gemini://gemi.dev/gemini-mailing-list/messages/000845.gmi int 80h
On Sun Jun 7 23:10:49 2020, solderpunk wrote: > On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 09:38:04PM +0300, Frank LENORMAND wrote: > > This amendment that prevents conflicts between list items and > > *emphasised text* indirectly acknowledges that clients may not > > render *emphasised text* verbatim. > > > > Writers are no longer ensured by the standard that their text surrounded with > > asterisks will not be decorated by the client, by extension. > > Writers were *never* assured by the standard that text surrounded with > asterisks would not be decorated by the client! > > Clients that want to do that can, but it's strictly an optional extra > out-of-spec nicety. If anybody wants to do this, the onus is on them to > do is smartly enough that it doesn't interfere with the specced use of > asterisks for line items. If they mess that up, presumably their users > will move to an either less ambitious or better written client which > doesn't mangle things. The adjustment made to the bullet item format is an admission that in-line formatting text is a thing. Writers MAY de-facto influence rendering, otherwise you wouldn't have needed to make the amendment. Before, writers could not reproach the clients' behaviour w.r.t to interpreting asterisks, because nothing in the specification hinted that it was acknowledged by the standard. Now, clients MAY highlight \*\S.*\* patterns. The specification was amended to make sure no ambiguous cases occur with bullet item lines. Which means that clients who do choose to implement emphasising will be asked for a way NOT to emphasise ALL such patterns, because the specification never implied that was a thing, originally. But they are left with a gaping hole, in the current state of the specification. It follows that there should be a way for writers to escape asterisks around words, in non pre-formatted blocks. Regards, -- Frank LENORMAND
On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 06:40:33PM -0400, Matthew Graybosch wrote: > I use asterisks inline for emphasis because that's a habit I've taken > from Markdown. My understanding of the standard was that the > behavior of inline asterisks (as opposed to asterisks at at the > beginning of a line to indicate a list item) is undefined and thus > client-dependent. > > If the client uses them to denote *italics* and **bold**, great. If > not, I figure that readers familiar with plain-text email will still > interpret such text accordingly. Either way, as a self-hosting writer, > my job is to make the words and reliably serve them. What happens on > the client side is none of my business. > > My understanding of the new changes to the standard is that the > behavior of inline asterisks is *still* client-dependent. That's fine > with me as a writer, TBH. If I wanted the illusion of precise control > over how clients render my documents, I'd go back to HTML/CSS--or > pick up groff again and just post PDFs. :) This is all correct - technically *and* ideologically. :) Cheers, Solderpunk
On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 07:06:38PM -0400, Matthew Graybosch wrote: > I just read the relevant part of the spec, but I'm still not clear on > how I should go about specifying that my text is US English. Do I just > have to add "lang=en_US" on the first line of a text/gemini file? No, the "lang" parameter is a parameter to the text/gemini MIME type which is part of the response header. It doesn't go in the document itself. Server software will need to provide admins and/or users some way to configure this. This will be fairly easy for people who run their own serer, and hence have access to the config file, and who write in only a single language - they can just set a single value which the server includes for all .gmi files (or whatever extension has been configured to serve as text/gemini). Multi-lingual sites would probably work best with content in different languages separated by the path hierarchy, and servers could let people designate different languages depending on which regex the path matches. Multi-user sites will be trickiest of all and will require users to either bother the admin, or for servers to implement something like Apache's .htaccess files. I don't deny that this is kind of painful. But I don't see a way around it - if we say that the first line of a text/gemini file should be "#lang: en-US" or anything like that we have immediately opened the door to arbitrarly many additional options. This basically gives us HTTP's open-ended response header structure and completely defeats the point of having a response header which is explicitly a single line. > > Lines beginning with ">" are now defined to be quote lines, as per > > popular demand. > > This will be handy, but now I'm wondering about pre-formatted quotes > (mainly for poetry, song lyrics, screenplays, etc.) I would expect those to be handled just with pre-formatted lines. I get that they're also a quote of sorts, but simplicity necessitates sacrifcing the ability for total semantic precision. I hope we can live with this. (of course, something like an entire screenplay can always just be served in its own document as text/plain) > Furthermore, looking for quote characters inside a preformatted block > and then rendering that block in a variable-width font instead (when > applicable) sounds like a good way to introduce bugs. It's also a clear violation of the spec! Cheers, Solderpunk
On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 10:47:41PM +0100, Luke Emmet wrote: > If a client must not make subsequent network requests when interpreting a > page, does this mean that search engines and crawlers are now non-compliant > clients? This seems to go much too far. > > I would think the "MUST NOT" would be better as a "SHOULD NOT" in case you > are adamant to try to shape client behaviour. In my view this is not in > scope of a protocol and markup format specification. You raise a good point, about search engines and the like. Perhaps I should specify "interactive clients". And I get that this kind of prescription is beyond what would usually be thought of as reasonable scope for a protocol spec. I also realise that it's entirely unenforcable. In some very unlikely distant future where the spec is being preened for actual IETF consideration I might remove it. But for now I want to do my best to make sure that Gemini develops not just a technical specification but a strong cultural sense of the right and wrong way to use that spec. Cheers, Solderpunk
On Mon Jun 8 10:22:33 2020, solderpunk wrote: > On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 06:40:33PM -0400, Matthew Graybosch wrote: > > I use asterisks inline for emphasis because that's a habit I've taken > > from Markdown. My understanding of the standard was that the > > behavior of inline asterisks (as opposed to asterisks at at the > > beginning of a line to indicate a list item) is undefined and thus > > client-dependent. > > > > If the client uses them to denote *italics* and **bold**, great. If > > not, I figure that readers familiar with plain-text email will still > > interpret such text accordingly. Either way, as a self-hosting writer, > > my job is to make the words and reliably serve them. What happens on > > the client side is none of my business. > > > > My understanding of the new changes to the standard is that the > > behavior of inline asterisks is *still* client-dependent. That's fine > > with me as a writer, TBH. If I wanted the illusion of precise control > > over how clients render my documents, I'd go back to HTML/CSS--or > > pick up groff again and just post PDFs. :) > > This is all correct - technically *and* ideologically. :) How are clients supposed to render words that are censored with asterisks? Consider:
> On Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 10:47:41PM +0100, Luke Emmet wrote: > > If a client must not make subsequent network requests when interpreting a > > page, does this mean that search engines and crawlers are now non-compliant > > clients? This seems to go much too far. The spec says > Clients can present links to users in whatever fashion the client author wishes, however clients MUST NOT automatically make any network connections as part of displaying links whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol (e.g. gemini://, gopher://, https://, ftp://, etc.). I find this reasonable: a crawler does not make any extra network connections *when interpreting a page* or *as part of displaying links*. Rather, it fetches single pages per spec, while building a graph of all known pages (which it then fetches, still as single pages in a way compatible with the spec). A crawler need not fetch any other pages in order to add a single page to its index. If a search engine started supporting inlining content from links it would be breaking the spec. My two cents. -Hannu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20200608/0890 33a4/attachment.htm>
I wonder how many data consumption these search engine are representing all over the web. Good thing with static site is that they can be cached and don't need to be downloaded each time to check is changed occurred. A timestamp should suffice. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20200608/e3a4 91a0/attachment.htm>
On Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:07:32 -0400 "int 80h" <int at 80h.dev> wrote: > I'm not sure how other server writers did it but I added "lang" as an > option per vhost, currently on the dev branch. lang in vhost config makes sense to me. Thanks. -- Matthew Graybosch https://www.matthewgraybosch.com #include <disclaimer.h> gemini://starbreaker.org Harrisburg,PA gemini://demifiend.org "Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."
On Mon Jun 8, 2020 at 3:36 AM EDT, solderpunk wrote: > No, the "lang" parameter is a parameter to the text/gemini MIME type > which is part of the response header. It doesn't go in the document > itself. Server software will need to provide admins and/or users some > way to configure this. The way I was thinking is have the server look at the first line for "#lang" then strip it and put it in the response header. That way it could be an implementation of the server and not the spec itself. > Multi-lingual sites would probably work best with content in different > languages separated by the path hierarchy, and servers could let people > designate different languages depending on which regex the path matches. > > Multi-user sites will be trickiest of all and will require users to > either bother the admin, or for servers to implement something like > Apache's .htaccess files. Something like .htaccess could work. This morning I was also thinking of it being in the file name. Then it could be on a per file basis like "index.fr.gmi" would be sent as "index.gmi" with "lang=fr" in the response header. int 80h
On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 01:10:42PM -0400, int 80h wrote: > The way I was thinking is have the server look at the first line for > "#lang" then strip it and put it in the response header. That way it > could be an implementation of the server and not the spec itself. Oh, sorry, I misunderstood! That seems perfectly cromulent, although I'd be a bit wary myself of tying my content to a specific server (unless this convention became widely adopted). Cheers, Solderpunk
On Mon Jun 8, 2020 at 1:26 PM EDT, solderpunk wrote: > Oh, sorry, I misunderstood! That seems perfectly cromulent, although > I'd be a bit wary myself of tying my content to a specific server > (unless this convention became widely adopted). True that could get annoying if it wasn't widely adopted. int 80h
"int 80h" <int at 80h.dev> writes: > On Sun Jun 7, 2020 at 3:06 PM EDT, Matthew Graybosch wrote: >> I just read the relevant part of the spec, but I'm still not clear on >> how I should go about specifying that my text is US English. Do I just >> have to add "lang=en_US" on the first line of a text/gemini file? > > I'm not sure how other server writers did it but I added "lang" as an > option per vhost, currently on the dev branch. My intention (in Germinal) is to have a global default option, a default per-virtual host (once I add virtual hosts), and provide some way of supplying individual files with metadata ? possibly a TOML file in each directory with a section for each file or something similar. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Jason F. McBrayer jmcbray at carcosa.net | | If someone conquers a thousand times a thousand others in | | battle, and someone else conquers himself, the latter one | | is the greatest of all conquerors. --- The Dhammapada |
On Mon, 8 Jun 2020, solderpunk wrote: > Oh, sorry, I misunderstood! That seems perfectly cromulent, although > I'd be a bit wary myself of tying my content to a specific server > (unless this convention became widely adopted). There is a danger here of unwittingly reinventing YAML frontmatter. Mk -- Martin Keegan, +44 7779 296469, @mk270, https://mk.ucant.org/
On Mon, 08 Jun 2020 11:24:44 +0300 Frank LENORMAND <lenormfml at gmail.com> wrote: > How are clients supposed to render words that are censored with > asterisks? I can't speak for anybody else, but I stopped using asterisks for self-censorship when I started using Markdown. Instead, I self-censor with hyphens when I do it at all, because I can't be bothered to make sure I've escaped every asterisk. -- Matthew Graybosch https://www.matthewgraybosch.com #include <disclaimer.h> gemini://starbreaker.org Harrisburg,PA gemini://demifiend.org "Out of order?! Even in the future nothing works."
On Mon, Jun 8, 2020, at 8:24 AM, Frank LENORMAND wrote: > How are clients supposed to render words that are censored with asterisks? > > Consider: > > *ssh*le > > The spec was modified to make sure clients understand the above isn't a > bullet item. Therefore writers are indirectly allowed by the standard to > influence the rendering, otherwise there would have been no conflict to > address in the first place. > > So clients will render the above as "sshle", which isn't the writer's > intent. Only a matter of time until you see writers start escaping asterisks > in texts: > > \*ssh\*le > > And now, because you've put the responsibility of dealing with a concept > that the standard implies is allowed, some clients will render the above > either verbatim, or have a concept of escaping, the latter being against > the philosophy of Gemini, from what I gather. > > You can't pretend clients will fill-in the gaps by themselves if the > specification isn't pedantic about it. AFAICT most clients do nothing with in-text formatting, and in fact if the document type is text/gemini they *should* not. text/gemini *only* specifies the 6 line-types for possibilities of special rendering, which means that your example of '*ssh*le' will render exactly as '*ssh*le' -- no escaping needed. If the mimetype is text/markdown, clients *could* render it differently, but text/markdown has its own escaping rules that a client would follow. -- Case (acdw)
On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 11:24:44AM +0300, Frank LENORMAND wrote: > How are clients supposed to render words that are censored with asterisks? However they like! But "verbatim" seems like the only sensible option. > The spec was modified to make sure clients understand the above isn't a > bullet item. Therefore writers are indirectly allowed by the standard to > influence the rendering, otherwise there would have been no conflict to > address in the first place. I really don't follow you here. Writers are of course *allowed* to put asterisks around their words if they want to but this doesn't imply that they should expect clients to do anything in particular with that information. People use asterisks to emphasise words when writing plain text content for Gopher where they know for sure that clients won't do anything with it. > So clients will render the above as "sshle", which isn't the writer's > intent. What on Earth makes you think clients will render that as sshle? I wouldn't use a client that did that. Cheers, Solderpunk
>The adjustment made to the bullet item format is an admission that >in-line >formatting text is a thing. I don't see it that way. It's simply an admission that people use * in plaintext for emphasis, and that there is a pretty straightforward way to make a markup that shouldn't interfere with people's text. It's really only important if people are turning existing files into gmi files, I would think. It fits the Gemini "philosophy" of determining the line type unambiguously in first 3 chars. I've dreamed of a wiki-native protocol as well, but Gemini ain't trying to be it. There are several servers as I understand that just serve markdown, too. You can use one of those, as was suggested. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20200609/3e5c 211e/attachment.htm>
> On Jun 7, 2020, at 18:27, solderpunk <solderpunk at SDF.ORG> wrote: > > If your client has been automatically making network connections you > MUST remove this behaviour and atone for your sins! Tuning down the zealotry MAY be beneficial.
It was thus said that the Great solderpunk once stated: > On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 11:24:44AM +0300, Frank LENORMAND wrote: > > > How are clients supposed to render words that are censored with asterisks? > > However they like! But "verbatim" seems like the only sensible option. > > > The spec was modified to make sure clients understand the above isn't a > > bullet item. Therefore writers are indirectly allowed by the standard to > > influence the rendering, otherwise there would have been no conflict to > > address in the first place. > > I really don't follow you here. Writers are of course *allowed* to put > asterisks around their words if they want to but this doesn't imply that > they should expect clients to do anything in particular with that > information. People use asterisks to emphasise words when writing > plain text content for Gopher where they know for sure that clients > won't do anything with it. A graphical Gemini browser *might* render text between astericks with italicised or bold text, to *emphasize* the emphasis that astericks imply. A text based Gemini browser might instead decide to bold or recolor the text, again to emphasize the emphasis. -spc
On 6/9/20 8:46 PM, Sean Conner wrote: > A graphical Gemini browser *might* render text between astericks with > italicised or bold text, to *emphasize* the emphasis that astericks imply. > A text based Gemini browser might instead decide to bold or recolor the > text, again to emphasize the emphasis. > > -spc I'm reading this in thunderbird, which has chosen to bold your examples of emphatic text. It does not remove the asterisks, though. Also, if I _underline_ a word, it renders it as such, but preserves the characters. If clients are looking for good real-world examples to emulate when going above-and-beyond the spec, I'd point there.
On Tue, Jun 09, 2020 at 04:46:00PM -0400, Sean Conner wrote: > > A graphical Gemini browser *might* render text between astericks with > italicised or bold text, to *emphasize* the emphasis that astericks imply. > A text based Gemini browser might instead decide to bold or recolor the > text, again to emphasize the emphasis. This is all fine. I would gently advise that clients which do this
> Multi-user sites will be trickiest of all and will require users to > either bother the admin, or for servers to implement something like > Apache's .htaccess files. > Something like .htaccess could work. This morning I was also thinking of it being in the file name. Then it could be on a per file basis like "index.fr.gmi" would be sent as "index.gmi" with "lang=fr" in the response header. int 80h One could also let the server interpret gmi files and strip the first x lines in each file. You could use pandoc title block, multimarkdown metadata or yaml front matter. That way you can also insert date etc to automatically generate for example atom feeds. Of cause these "file headers" will be stripped before sending the file to the client. Its really up to the server on how to deal with it. /Jens. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20200614/5c13 91c0/attachment.htm>
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