[ANN] GemiNaut 0.8.5 released

[Luke Emmet]

On 21-Jun-2020 14:49, Frank LENORMAND wrote:
> On Sun Jun 21 16:33:02 2020, Luke Emmet wrote:
>> Just to let you know there is a new release of GemiNaut out today.
>>
>> Mostly minor fixes and improvements, but with a new gorgeous dark theme
>> and bookmarks, there are both usability and aesthetic improvements for
>> everyone. You can also now create your own custom themes if you wish.
> It's a bit ironic that theming relies on HTML and CSS.
Perhaps, but I don't think so. HTML and CSS is just an implementation 
detail that allows for a very flexible way to present structured textual 
content. I'd rather focus on building the nicest experience that 
focusses on readability in a broad sense.

To express the elements needed for building the user experience in 
GemiNaut I would need: font colour, font face, font size, padding, 
margin, border, underline, hanging indent, block float, text wrap 
behaviour, tooltips. I think I've just reinvented a wheel, and now I 
need to invent a layout and behavioural engine to interpret said 
language. Hang on, my OS can do that for me, so I can spend more time 
thinking about other stuff...

My intention in creating the themes in GemiNaut is to provide some good 
ones that will suit a wide range of users, but once you have that 
flexibility it seems no reason not to let users do their own if they 
have strong opinions on typesetting and layout etc.

> I think there's room here for a minimal language that would allow applying
> colours/decoration to arbitrary Gemini contents without depending on the
> HTML/CSS pair.
Might be nice, but I'm not sure its necessary or whether it would be 
widely adopted by all the different clients. Each client is going to 
have its own options for how content is styled and presented. Its not 
just about H1 font and colour is X + Y.
> I don't have any suggestions (yet), but I think Gemini browser authors
> have an opportunity to come up with a minimalist syntax geared for Gemini
> contents that isn't as convoluted and rich as CSS.
>
> What do you think?
I think you might as well start from a subset of CSS if you want the 
flexibility beyond basic styles. Or if you want something basic, maybe 
just a list of fonts colours and sizes. But that still leaves out 
elements of whitespace, margins etc.

Best Wishes

  - Luke