Ambiguity in the gemini document spec

[solderpunk]

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 03:41:05AM +0000, colecmac at protonmail.com wrote:
> Hello everyone! Although this is mostly directed to solderpunk.
> 
> I've noticed something that's not clearly defined in the part of
> the Gemini spec that concerns the text/gemini format. Specifically,
> something should be added in section 1.3.5.1 or 1.3.5.2.
> 
> The link specification in 1.3.5.3.2 defines links as:
> 
> =>[<whitespace>]<URL>[<whitespace><USER-FRIENDLY LINK NAME>]<CR><LF>
> 
> But no where else in the spec does it say that lines must end with
> <CR><LF> characters, in fact how lines end is not defined at all.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, somebody raised the same point
to me on Mastodon at about the same time.

I'm quite surprised this spec ambiguity hasn't been mentioned before
now!  Perhaps it has, it sounds very vaguely familiar.  I think at the
time nobody thought it mattered much. But the fact that, unlike HTML,
the text/gemini format is explicitly line-oriented, means that this is
actually an important point.

I strongly suspect the use of <CR><LF> in 1.3.5.3.2 is simply the result
of me being in the habit of using it elsewhere in the spec while talking
about the request and response syntax.

This definitely needs to be cleared up, I've added it to the list of
things to address once the spec-freeze thaws (soon!).  In principle the
freeze shouldn't apply to real problems which definitely need solving,
but it's close enough to over now, and this problem, while real,
obviously hasn't caused any actual practical difficulties, so there's no
need to rush it.

Cheers,
Solderpunk