Pondering interfaces over the Gemini 1x responses (was: CGI)

[Solderpunk]

On Sun Jul 19, 2020 at 2:59 PM CEST, Paul Boyd wrote:
> I did consider a succession of inputs. I think we can all agree that a
> succession of modal inputs is irritating, and the UI would be exactly
> that
> on most clients.

To my mind this is the canonical way of getting multi-part input: use
client certificates to establish a persistent session and then just have
the server send successive responses with status code 10.

I agree this would be irritating in a GUI client that pops up a box akin
to a HTTP basic auth login box every time, but that's more an argument
against that being a good UI design than against this being a good way
to handle this kind of input.  This approach is what the protocol makes
natural/obvious, and so it makes sense to design UIs to match it.

In an UI like AV-98, this approach works exceptionally well and provides
a look and feel that's almost indistinguishable from using a shell, or a
terminal application with a REPL interface.  That's a very powerful
thing which we still haven't even begun to experiment with the power of.

I realise something like AV-98 is not a comfortable "daily reading"
interface for most people.  Of course, there are probably ways to make
this approach pleasant to use in a GUI client - people are very welcome
to work on that.  I also still think that having separate clients for
reading static text and using remote applications makes a lot of sense.
It's not necessarily a good match to quick and easy, low-effort
interactivity - but then, that was never the goal.

Cheers,
Solderpunk