approachabe & frugal & composable

[defdefred]

Maybe Gemini is too open to protect users from the web as it is now...
freD.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Tuesday 2 June 2020 03:14, Petite Abeille <petite.abeille at gmail.com> wrote:

> As it stands, Gemini [1] -and especially Mercury [2]- is refreshingly approachable and  frugal.
>
> A -very minimal- one-liner Gemini client:
>
> # openssl s_client -quiet -crlf -connect gemini.conman.org:1965 <<< gemini://gemini.conman.org/ 2>/dev/null
> 20 text/gemini
> Welcome to Conman Laboraties Gemini Server!
>
> And that is that. The whole Gemini protocol in 3 lines.
>
> But what 3 lines!
>
> A request is a single line containing a fully specified URL.
> A successful response is a single line containing the numeric response code, a space, and a content-type.
> The canonical content, text/gemini, consists of two core line types: text and link.
> All UTF-8 encoded. Over TLS.
>
> And that is that.
>
> Quite spartan at first glance.
>
> But also, possibly, quite universal.
>
> Fancy jumping the shark over Zawinski's law [3] from the onset?
>
> Combine RFC5092 [4] for the request and RFC2045 [5] for the response:
>
> imap://minbari.example.org/gray-council/;uid=20
> 20 message/rfc822
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> ...
>
> Fancy supporting multiple protocols at once?
>
> Look at conman's nifty sigil script [6], which supports HTTP, GEMINI, and GOPHER for good measure. From one CGI script.
>
> In other words, because a Gemini request is a full-fledged URL, it can support any number of protocols, as long as such protocol can be expressed as an URL [7].
>
> Ditto for the response, which can be any media type [8] a Gemini server cares to generate.
>
> In short, a Gemini URL request combined with a Gemini media type response is quite universal indeed.
>
> Ditto for the rather unassuming text/gemini content type.
>
> While at its core it only sports 2 line types, the presence of the link line, which is an URL, open the door to infinite composition.
>
> Fancy an atom feed? Add a feed URI [9] in your text/gemini:
>
> => feed://example.com/entries.atom
>
> Would you like to anchor your text/gemini in a point in time? Perhaps the tag URI can help:
>
> => tag:example.com,2004-01-01:1234
>
> Indicate a location? A geo URI may help:
>
> => geo:37.786971,-122.399677
>
> etc, etc, the possibilities are endless.
>
> Quite a lot of firepower for a two lines protocol, with a two line content type :)
>
> --
> PA
>
> [1] https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/spec-spec.txt
> [2] https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/users/solderpunk/cornedbeef/the-mercury-protocol.gmi
> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
> [4] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5092
> [5] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2045
> [6] https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.conman.org/sigil-cgi.lua
> [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_URI_schemes
> [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_type
> [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_URI_scheme
> [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_URI_scheme
> [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme
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