So... The IANA MIME registry officially defines "+gzip" as a valid mime suffix.
So... gemini capsules *could* serve a "20 text/gemini+gzip" response for gemtext, it clients could know to gunzip it.
Now the client's request has no way to say it support this, but you could config the server with a super simple rewrite rule so that any .gmi file would use a text/gemini+gzip MIME type if the client requests it with an ".gmi.gz" extension. You could also rewrite the gemtext body on the fly so the same-site .gmi links are also .gmi.gz...
Is compression for Gemini (and specifically Gemtext) necessarily? No. But it woudl be fun to hack it into a client!
2 years ago
definitely a fun hack. how would it work for clients knowing gz and servers that don’t? would we see failed requests in the logs and non-gz retries? the favicon 404 clutter all over again (worst case)? there seems to be no way for servers to announce capabilities *by design*. not that it prohibits us from making changes… (see spartan) · 2 years ago