Lightweight Unicode Author Client Hinting - LUACH proposal

[Luke Emmet]

Hello makeworld

There are a number of use cases I have in mind, but all are intended to 
be within the spirit of gemini as presented so far.

1. Helps to assemble the meta-graph of commentary between pages. Various 
gemini search engines (global or local) could show you for any provided 
URL what other pages have provided comments or responses. If a link is 
not decorated some how, the search bot cannot tell if you are merely 
linking to a site or responding to it. In this way I think it could 
support a gemini-flavoured commentary infrastructure

2. Improved UI for clients navigating a site. If you follow a link deep 
into a site you may not know where the "home" is or other common 
navigational links (you might guess). This could provide a way to 
canonically indicate it.

3. Optional inclusion of content in-context. For example to see a figure 
within a page, without it being forced to be included (as is with html). 
It is a hint that can be taken or not depending on user preference.

4. To better enable navigation of everyone through gemini space. Better 
knowing what you will get before you click on a link is a way for 
everyone to make a calculation as to whether you want to follow the link 
or if you dont need to.

As to the matter of naturalness, it is intended to be as lightweight as 
it can be and builds on practices that already exist  (e.g. speech 
bubble or home emoji, or the normal practice of using "home" as the link 
display text). I tried to choose a simple and hopefully-salient set of 
elements, but the actual code points and text is up for discussion.

There is a textual form as well as the unicode code points, so for 
example you can just do this

=>menu.gmi Site [navigation]

There might be other use cases that could make use of the pattern, but I 
think the point would be to have a minimally useful set to start with 
and see how it goes. At the moment we are in the same situation as the 
web where every link is an untyped reference and there is no way of 
understanding the deeper structure unless you have the resources of 
Google behind you.

The actual details can be evolved, its really whether the pattern is 
useful as a codified convention on top of Gemini, and to explore what 
the network effects or authors, clients, search, applications, adopting 
this or something like it would need to be be to make it work (one site 
doing it alone is of little value).

Best Wishes

  - Luke

On 04-Jun-2020 14:50, colecmac at protonmail.com wrote:
> This is an interesting proposal, but I feel like it would become a
> chore when writing, something you'd try and remember to do because it
> wouldn't feel natural. Which is probably the opposite of what we want.
>
> I also don't see the total need for this, could you maybe explain more
> about a use case?
>
> makeworld
>
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Thursday, June 4, 2020 7:22 AM, Luke Emmet<luke.emmet at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone
>>
>> I've been thinking about various discussions we've been having on the
>> list related to how to use and build on/augment the geminisphere in a
>> way that is true to the gemini vision, such as how do we:
>>
>> -   indicate and find comments between pages in a lightweight gemini-way
>> -   provide ways to optionally "include" images or text
>> -   signal where is your a site home page
>> -   provide a common navigation menu
>> -   indicate the location of your site logo
>>
>>      I've started a proposal to define a way for an author to signal these
>>      elements in a lightweight, text based and optional way, dubbed
>>      "Lightweight Unicode Author Client Hinting for Gemini - LUACH"
>>
>>      The idea is to codify a minimal set of conventions we can use to build
>>      further structure on top of the gemini space to support additional
>>      purposes.
>>
>>      I must emphasis the intention is for this to be wholly optional and I
>>      dont think it needs to become part of the canonical standard, as it is
>>      just a set of optional text conventions. Maybe if successful it could be
>>      a set of common conventions that are becoming adopted, and a good
>>      practice. It codifies things that are emerging as common conventions we
>>      see in geminispace, or more widely. For example "standard" names for
>>      home page or ways of communicating comments textually
>>
>>      =>  gemini://myowndomain/home.gmi Home
>>
>>
>> =>  gemini://xyzdomain/cookery/egg-recipies.gmi Responds to XYZ thoughts
>> on how to cook eggs
>>
>> Or as we already see the use of unicode glyphs to indicate comments such
>> as the speech bubble 💬 emoji or house 🏠 for home.
>>
>> This is intended to be very lightweight and helpful for readers using
>> simple command line clients as much as it might be for richer clients
>> who may provide additional UI. There isnt any overhead for authors apart
>> from providing these optional hints in their link text, which can help
>> everyone.
>>
>> The "responds to" and "has comments" can be used by search crawlers to
>> build a meta layer of who is commenting on whom within gemini space
>>
>> I've put it in Github here:
>>
>> https://github.com/LukeEmmet/GeminiLUACH
>>
>> Comments and further thoughts welcome
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> -   Luke
>