<META> overloading...

[solderpunk]

On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 03:10:30PM +0000, colecmac at protonmail.com wrote:
> > I think we need to rule out the equivalent of
> 
> All existing clients rule this out, I don't see the issue. As long as
> clients continue not to execute arbitrary Javascript, it should be fine.

The issue is that the history of the web demonstrates that the most
powerful/inclusive interpretation of a spec tends to become the only
acceptable implementation over a long enough timeline.  Everybody builds
their content for that interpretation, and more conservative clients
come to be considered "broken".  It's like trying to surf the modern web
with cookies and JS turned off: nothing works.  The only hope is to
design specs where the most powerful interpretation is within acceptable
limits.  Which seems to me to be impossible in a world where URLs can be
harmless pointers to network resources *or* arbitrarily large chunks of
data of arbitrary but unamiguous type.

In that crazy world, our only hope is a strong cultural norm of "No,
don't do that!".  It's true that maybe that will work better for Gemini
than it did for the web, because, you know, the web is actually there
alongside Gemini and people who really want the worst of the web will
just stick with it and leave us alone.

But I really didn't want to just rely on politely asking people not to
do certain things, but to make it impossible or very difficult to do
them at the protocol level.  I know you can never *really* do that,
people can ignore RFCs and implement totally broken stuff and the
internet police don't come and arrest them.  But I had hoped we could
get really close to that ideal.

Cheers,
Solderpunk