Meeting the Gemini protocol Sunday, November 24, 2019 I remember my first day here. I was quite confused by the lack of specifics in the documentation I was finding on the gopher protocol. What charset should I use? Line terminators? What's the right line length? Do clients reflow text? Also, some gopher shortcomings where becoming obvious: really, no links in text content? really? can you only link to this handful of content formats? Why just these and not some other set? Remember going through what I now guess must a new gopher's rite of passage: abusing gophermap's "i" infolines in order to simulate text posts with links in them. See 'To "i" or not to "i"' [2], ha! Also perverting the h file type for fun and for profit was a distinct temptation. I promptly ditched these. They were too much of a burden just for the sake of convenience [fn_1]. I posted some entries here, [1], [2] and [3], to which Solderpunk kindly replied by email. Most of these are not specified, customary practice is x, and current conventions are y and z. Solderpunk! How come you didn't mention Gemini at the time?! Today I was looking for some better gopher client and found, I think it was Bombadillo, mentioning Gemini support. hmmm... OK, will have a look at some other time. Then, being an emacs user, I came to elpher. What? Gemini protocol support again? OK then, that was one too many. Let's have a look at it now. WHAT A GREAT SURPRISE! Turns up my above grievances are the very same every one suffers. Gemini is squarely aimed at solving all of them and more. Not only that, Gemini is a Circumlunar Space born effort. Brought to us by none but Solderpunk himself. Spent some time reading the FAQ, Speculative specification, and Best practices documents. I have to say I find Gemini to be nearly perfect, in letter and spirit. There's a couple details I don't think are actually that good an idea. I'll leave those for another post. This one's already way too long. Foot notes ---------- [fn_1] Mind this concept of 'enduring too much of a burden just for the sake of convenience' if you're planning on reading any more of my content here. It's gonna be a recurring theme in future posts. References ---------- [1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~andram/phlog/rookie_gopher_I.txt [2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~andram/phlog/rookie_gopher_II.txt [3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~andram/phlog/rookie_gopher_III.txt