An unexpected favicon request

[solderpunk]

>   I found requests for favicon.ico from last week.  Perhaps it's a web
> proxy?  

I would guess it's a Gemini client experimenting with the idea of
favicons in Gemini, which have certainly been proposed.  See, e.g.:

gemini://mozz.us/journal/2020-04-17.gmi

plus discussion elsewhere on this list (where somebody proposed using a
single UTF-8 encoded emoji as an ultralight favicon, which is a cute
idea).

>   Anyway, I set up my server to serve up a favicon.ico no matter where it's
> requested (oh yeah, new feature to GLV-1.12556).
> 
>   -spc (That shouldn't be a problem, right?)

Well, it's not really within the scope of the Gemini spec to explicitly
forbid things like this.  If people want to write clients which do it,
nobody can stop them.  If people want to do it, I strongly encourage
them to make it an option the user can easily disabled.  Some people,
myself included, hold the "one request per page" principle in very high
regard, so I probably wouldn't add this to a client of mine, even if I
had a graphical one where it made sense.

I do grant that, as far as "secondary requests" not under direct control
of the user go, this is probably the least harmful kind possible, where
the path is fixed and it goes to a server that the user has already
agreed to visit.

Cheers,
Solderpunk