Text reflow woes (or: I want bullets back!)y

[Michael Lazar]

On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 7:05 AM solderpunk <solderpunk at sdf.org> wrote:
> Point ii) above is not going to change any time soon, in fact it's only
> going to become increasingly common as time goes on, whether the
> retrogrouches amongst us like it or not.  But point i) is just an
> arbitrary convention and so entirely mutable.
>
> This raises the question: is there a number of characters at which
> text/gemini content could be, by convention, wrapped by the author such
> that it displays nicely on a majority of mobile devices whilst not
> looking ridiculous on real displays?

I think this is a valid idea that is worth seriously considering. I actually
went through the same train of thought about a week ago, but I held back from
posting because wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it, and I'm
simultaneously working on a proposal for a simplified markdown dialect for
gemini [1].

I have a iPhone 10 XR and use the iOS gopher client by Charles Childers. My
font size can fit 96 characters wide and 44 characters narrow. I could probably
read a slightly smaller font, but I have trouble clicking on the links with my
fat fingers.

Limiting the width below 70 characters is largely unexplored territory. This is
the type of constraint that could inspire people to get creative in their page
design (in a good way). Gemini pages might end up evolving their own distinct
identity that distinguishes them from other text platforms. It could also open
the door to experimenting with terminal client UI, for example displaying
multiple pages side-by-side.

Sources say that everything from 45 to 75 characters wide is satisfactory for
text readability [2]. I would probably aim for 45-50 to comfortably fit most
smart phones for most people.

Perhaps the largest downside of using a fixed width format is that you lose
accessibility. People with reduced vision might want/need to use a larger font
than average. With re-flowed text this is easy because the text will wrap to
fit their screen. Also, I've heard that screen readers work poorly with hard
line wraps, although I can't find a citation for that.

[1] gemini://mozz.us/markdown/
[2] http://webtypography.net/2.1.2