Re: Gemini protocol view?

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > Hi:
> > 
> > Just a wild idea -- how hard would it be to present a gemini:// protocol view
> > in addition to the web view?
> 
> Probably not hard at all, but I haven't looked at it at all and
> am still trying figure out how to make a 2.0 release soon with
> codesearch support...

Yeah, definitely doable and a mostly mindless distraction
while hitting mental blocks with codesearch UI.

Not sure about clients, I'm just using something like:

	echo $URL | openssl s_client -crlf -connect ...

right now; but I know https://git.sr.ht/~rkta/w3m has a gemini
branch which I'll have to look at.  I loathe having to program
new TUI keybindings into my muscle memory.

notes:

* The ``` use for preformatted blocks doesn't have an established
  way to escape it, but I suppose prefixing those with
  "\N{ZERO WIDTH SPACE}" is fine for escaping.

* the specifications are developed on GitLab so not accessible
  to non-JS users (which seems like a chunk of the target
  audience for gemini)

* text/gemini is better than the mess that is Markdown (or similar)

* lack of TLS connection reuse sucks on high-latency networks
  if trying to browse through a bunch of messages quickly
  (something that an NNTP/IMAP client would do)

* lack of compression would suck for /T/ and /t/ endpoints
  for trying to browse a thread w/ a single request...

* titan:// is an extension that can be used like POST/PUT if we
  ever support non-SMTP inputs; especially with TOFU + client
  certs (`git send-titan' anyone?)

* URLs being limited to 1024 bytes shouldn't be a problem for
  non-spam Message-IDs (Xapian has a lower limit (244) for terms)

more to come...