[ANN] List of Gemini web mirrors

[Luke Emmet]

Hi Peter

That looks great and is worth keeping if you are happy to host it.

The question of what is the equivalent of in-line links in Gemini comes 
up from time to time, either as it is a natural thing that authors want 
to do and already do, or when re-presenting existing markdown or html 
for gemini.

The most common idiom I have seen is the use of square brackets to 
indicate the placemarker in the text line as a citation, followed by a 
link having the reference. For example like this [1] that would be one 
of the subsequent links, or another one [2] that goes to the second one. 
It is a common form seen in many places, such as academic papers with 
footnotes and references.

=> url display text with matching item at end [1]
=> url2 [2] display text with match at beginning

Personally I find this better than simply having the text without any 
clear boundary, as it is clearer where the citation is made. For example 
if you just use a single word it is unclear which usage of it is the 
link anchor. There could even be multiple words that match, and you 
don't want them all implicitly referencing the link. So it is more 
specific this way.

My personal view is that this type of re-wiring-up, to put back the 
links into the text could be a client option, and user choice. Then the 
hotspots in the text could be reinstated. The criteria would be:

1. Link anchor uses the defined pattern e.g.

  - [n] as the first or last item in the display text
  - or more adventurously, matching text in a square bracket as the 
whole link line display text like this: [the thing]

2. After the line is a list of links, and there is a match as the first 
or last word in the display text. Or maybe just in the following content 
(like a list of references at the end of the page)

3. Then the link anchor is wired up to the target

  - optional) the link line is optionally hidden (again user and client 
choice)

It would be nice if the mirroring tools adopted a common convention on 
this, as then clients can do more work to improve the UI for users.

And anyway, this all gracefully degrades and is just a client nicety. It 
could be noted as part of our collective common practice.

Best wishes

  - Luke

On 19-Jun-2020 23:46, Peter Vernigorov wrote:
> Wikipedia on Gemini by popular demand:
>
> gemini://wp.pitr.ca/en/Gemini_(constellation)
>
> This is not strictly a mirror, as a dump of wikipedia is quite large -
> https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20200520/ - but rather a proxy that
> makes request to wikipedia API, parses wikitext into an HTML DOM
> (since wikitext supports HTML tags) which is then simplified into
> text/gemini. This process is not perfect and there are quite a few
> imperfections. But before I sink more time into this, I wonder if
> text/gemini is indeed the best format for wikipedia articles. Pages
> are usually huge, with lots of links. And this is even before
> considerations for how best to handle images, tables, special symbols,
> special tags, etc. From trying to browse it myself, my first
> impression is that wikipedia format can't/shouldn't be simplified any
> further than it already is on the web. What do others think?
>
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 12:45 PM defdefred<defdefred at protonmail.com>  wrote:
>> Soon a wikipedia mirror?
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
>> On Wednesday 17 June 2020 12:24,<paper at tilde.institute>  wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 10:17:58AM +0000, solderpunk wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 05:56:57AM -0400, paper at tilde.institute wrote:
>>>> Good job with the "Why?" page! You convinced me quickly.
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Solderpunk
>>> I wasn't sure the Why page was good enough, thanks alot.
>>>
>>> Paper
>>