A plan for growing the ecosystem

[paper at tilde.institute]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 04:30:30PM -0400, Matthew Graybosch wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:36:25 -0600
> case <me at case.codes> wrote:
> 
> > 1. Work with static site generators to get Gemini support built. At
> > the least as supported plugins, then as part of the default
> > distribution. md2gemini is key here
> 
> My understanding is that you only really need text/gemini for index
> pages; all other text content can be text/plain, text/markdown, etc.

Yes, but the text/gemini syntax is much simpler, simpler to parse... Of
course if a blogger wants to have inline images, then they will probably
have to use markdown.

> However, I remember enough about how Jekyll works to know that it
> should be possible to create a Liquid template that outputs a gemini
> index, since Liquid templates have also been used in Jekyll to generate
> RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds. You can probably do the same in Hugo and
> Pelican using their templates; no need for plugins.

I read a phlog post about 3 months ago where someone was describing how
they created a template for Hugo which outputs gophermaps, maybe we
could get inspiration there.

> > 2. Get feed readers to support gemini, starting with open source ones.
> 
> IIRC, feed readers support render HTML by using libraries like
> webkitgtk3. Supporting Gemini text would require the implementation of a
> similar rendering library.

Most people I know are using a web based client, there it shouldn't be a
big problem. Plus, webkit2gtk and other libraries like this render HTML,
so if we converted text/gemini to HTML, it will work. I know, not the
best solution, but it's a possibility.

Paper