Hi All,

I ran across this a few days ago, a short but interesting
read.

gemini://gemini.techrights.org/n/2023/11/15/Gemini_Needs_More_Publicity_and_Users.gmi

Regards

John McCue <jmccue@hairball.jmcunx.com> writes:

> I ran across this a few days ago, a short but interesting read.
>
> gemini://gemini.techrights.org/n/2023/11/15/Gemini_Needs_More_Publicity_and_Users.gmi

It may or may not need more publicity and users.

The more important question is: Does it deserve it?

The web was thought as the collection of knowledge and the browsers were
meant to fetch and display it independently of protocol and text format.

In the early 90s it was no big deal to get some pages via ftp: or
gopher: instead of only using http: and I see no reason why this cannot
happen in the future again.

The smallnet separatism does not keep an atom of this Alexandria-2.0
dream alive and neither do today's full-fat browsers.

Publicity?

We need browsers where gemini: and other protocols again live side by
side instead of today's broken networked single protocol file viewers.

We should meet in the middle again. In the diverse web, visualised in a
browser that deserves it name.

When pages via gopher: and gemini: are just an other link among others
in the web pages in a browser that deserves its name, people will just
click on those links.

If the smallnet keeps on insisting in its separatism it doesn't deserve
better than its current state.

Am I alone?

Well, even if the smallnet wants to stick to its separatism, I damn want
back the multi-protocol browsers! Elinks and Emacs are a good start,
but maybe using Dillo (has a simple "plugin" system) to add more and
more protocols and formats to the same front-end would make more people
happy than Elinks, Emacs, W3m, Lynx, ... alone?

--
|rom The Future. +++ Breaking News From The Future. +++ Breaking News F|
| The USoA are switching to the binary number system because |
| having more than 1+1 distinct digits is far too woke. |
|+ #MABA + #makeAmericaBinaryAgain + #USA + #USoA + #woke + #MABA + #ma|

yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:
> John McCue <jmccue@hairball.jmcunx.com> writes:
>
>> I ran across this a few days ago, a short but interesting read.
<snip>
>
> It may or may not need more publicity and users.
>
> The more important question is: Does it deserve it?

I would like to see more users anyway.

> The web was thought as the collection of knowledge and the browsers were
> meant to fetch and display it independently of protocol and text format.
>
> In the early 90s it was no big deal to get some pages via ftp: or
> gopher: instead of only using http: and I see no reason why this cannot
> happen in the future again.

To me, the main difference with gemini is Cell Phones.
From what I know about Cell Phones (not much though) is
rendering. Gemini should render fine on Cells, but I
suspect gopher may have issues.

> The smallnet separatism does not keep an atom of this Alexandria-2.0
> dream alive and neither do today's full-fat browsers.
>
> Publicity?
>
> We need browsers where gemini: and other protocols again live side by
> side instead of today's broken networked single protocol file viewers.

I agree with this, but I find gemini docs very easy to
maintain when compared to other formats.

<snip>
>
> Well, even if the smallnet wants to stick to its separatism, I damn want
> back the multi-protocol browsers! Elinks and Emacs are a good start,
> but maybe using Dillo (has a simple "plugin" system) to add more and
> more protocols and formats to the same front-end would make more people
> happy than Elinks, Emacs, W3m, Lynx, ... alone?

I would really like to see lynx support gemini, it already
supports gopher. Emacs works fine with a plugin. For
dillo, I have issues getting their gemini plugin to work.

John McCue <jmccue@qball.jmcunx.com> writes:

> yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:
>> John McCue <jmccue@hairball.jmcunx.com> writes:
>> Well, even if the smallnet wants to stick to its separatism, I damn want
>> back the multi-protocol browsers! Elinks and Emacs are a good start,
>> but maybe using Dillo (has a simple "plugin" system) to add more and
>> more protocols and formats to the same front-end would make more people
>> happy than Elinks, Emacs, W3m, Lynx, ... alone?

> I would really like to see lynx support gemini, it already
> supports gopher. Emacs works fine with a plugin. For
> dillo, I have issues getting their gemini plugin to work.

I have not tried the Gemini plugin for Dillo, but I knew it
existed.

The felinks fork of links/links2/elinks supports Gemini and Gopher. It
is slightly fussy around public keys.

The way WebExtensions work, it would not be possible to bring Gemini to
the big web browsers via extension *directly*, but it would be possible
to implement something like Floodgap's Overbite extension, which
transparently rewrites Gopher links to use their web gateway.

I *looked* at adding Gemini support to Lynx a little while back, because
I have worked with the Lynx source a little in the past (porting it to
OS/2 in the '90s). I didn't go through with it because I didn't see any
clear extension points. Maybe if I win the lottery and no longer have to
spend time and brainpower on a day job.

I do think that every Gemini browser needs to support Gopher; it is
jarring when I tap a Gopher link in Buran or RosyCrow and it opens up
Lagrange.

--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Jason F. McBrayer jmcbray@carcosa.net |
| A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, |
| even though we do not love it. -- Dogen |

John McCue <jmccue@qball.jmcunx.com> wrote:
> yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:
>> Well, even if the smallnet wants to stick to its separatism, I damn want
>> back the multi-protocol browsers! Elinks and Emacs are a good start,
>> but maybe using Dillo (has a simple "plugin" system) to add more and
>> more protocols and formats to the same front-end would make more people
>> happy than Elinks, Emacs, W3m, Lynx, ... alone?
>
> I would really like to see lynx support gemini, it already
> supports gopher. Emacs works fine with a plugin. For
> dillo, I have issues getting their gemini plugin to work.

There are at least three Gemini plug-ins to choose from for Dillo.

These two:
https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25V0D7DtSnZyyAp1NbgOJF2ZAFMeUy9eXwyClCEKYUYAI%3D.sha256
https://github.com/boomlinde/gemini.filter.dpi

Then Dillo-Plus includes a Gemini plug-in based on the old HTTPS
plug-in. However I'm not sure whether it relies on any features
only present in the Dillo-Plus fork of the main browser program.

https://github.com/crossbowerbt/dillo-plus

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _# | Note: I won't see posts made from Google Groups |

Jason McBrayer wrote:
> The way WebExtensions work, it would not be possible to bring Gemini to
> the big web browsers via extension *directly*, but it would be possible
> to implement something like Floodgap's Overbite extension, which
> transparently rewrites Gopher links to use their web gateway.
The SeaMonkey web suite is based on modern Firefox Gecko while still
using XUL, so it can technically be implemented. It's not a major
browser in any way but the way it works is far better in my opinion..

Support for WebExtensions is planned for the future in SeaMonkey so
it'll probably be able to use a WebExtensions based Gemini program if
it's made though.

Jason McBrayer <jmcbray@carcosa.net> wrote:
> The way WebExtensions work, it would not be possible to bring Gemini to
> the big web browsers via extension *directly*, but it would be possible
> to implement something like Floodgap's Overbite extension, which
> transparently rewrites Gopher links to use their web gateway.

I think this is a problem with WebExtensions perhaps. It is a feature which
is missing in WebExtensions. (There also seems to be the feature missing
(as far as I can tell) to define new MIME types.)

(XUL supports both. I have written a code to support the Gemini file format
in XUL-based browsers (including being able to display Gemini files loaded
from HTTP(S) and local files, and from ZIP archives), but I had not been
able to figure out how to implement the Gemini protocol in JavaScript with
XUL. Do you know how?)

> I do think that every Gemini browser needs to support Gopher; it is
> jarring when I tap a Gopher link in Buran or RosyCrow and it opens up
> Lagrange.

Well, it would be a good idea to support Gopher as well as Gemini. (It is
perhaps not strictly mandatory, but it is a good idea anyways.) Supporting
the file: URI scheme would also be good, and if you want to be able to
display Gempub files, then the jar: URI scheme would be helpful, too.

--
Don't laugh at the moon when it is day time in France.

On Fri, 8 Dec 2023 23:33:19 +0900
Yuchan Seo <hexagonwin@disroot.org> wrote:

> Jason McBrayer wrote:
> > The way WebExtensions work, it would not be possible to bring
> > Gemini to the big web browsers via extension *directly*, but it
> > would be possible to implement something like Floodgap's Overbite
> > extension, which transparently rewrites Gopher links to use their
> > web gateway.
> The SeaMonkey web suite is based on modern Firefox Gecko while still
> using XUL, so it can technically be implemented. It's not a major
> browser in any way but the way it works is far better in my opinion..
>
> Support for WebExtensions is planned for the future in SeaMonkey so
> it'll probably be able to use a WebExtensions based Gemini program if
> it's made though.

Happy to see that they included the Coleco Gemini, which was an Atari
2600 clone. I had one and it was a great system.