Unadorned Gemtext instead of syndication formats

[easeout at tilde.team]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 11:17:42AM -0700, Meff wrote:

> At this point in time, how many folks can write Gemtext but aren't
> confident writing HTML? Yes, for those that hand-author feeds, it's
> certainly a bit of a bother writing XML by hand (I've screwed it up
> myself a few times), but I'm not sure the
> Gemini community is at the point where we have users that are confident
> with Gemtext but not with HTML.

> If there's just a shell script parsing text and making socat commands, what's
> stopping an author from using `jq` or `xidel` on the output to parse
> JSON and XML respectively? I realize in code it's not that simple, but
> most languages in general use have JSON and XML parsers easily available
> and generally well documented.

It's true that us early adopters are comfortable enough to handle this,
and that publishing Atom or RSS has distinct advantages. But I hope we
get to the point where it's not just us early adopters. If we can make
it simpler for newcomers, we might get there sooner.

I think for Gemini to grow and thrive and have new content that sustains
it, the ecosystem needs to:

- Convert web readers to Gemini readers, so there is more audience
- Convert Gemini readers to Gemini publishers, so there is more content
- Convert Gemini publishers to Gemini hosts, so there are more domains

That's a funnel, basically. At each stage, some fraction of people will
stop and not move to the next stage. The simpler we make each step, the
farther through the funnel the average user will get. So I want to push
on all of these things. Today I'm attempting to make the syndication
part of publishing simpler.

There's also nothing wrong with continuing to publish Atom or RSS. I can
think of two big advantages: You would still have to use a feed format
in order to syndicate beyond Gemini. You could declare exactly which
links you wanted to publish, which is nicer for your readers, so readers
should prefer it when it's offered. In other words, incentives still
exist to make the upgrade. I just don't think there is a cost to
building clients that can subscribe to your Gemtext page even if you
haven't made a feed.

> One of my favorite parts of Gemini is the attitude that it works with the
> rest of the net, as opposed to trying to cloister itself like the Web
> does. One of my pet peeves with the web is how it tries to reinvent
> everything. Long-lived connections, push protocols, things that TCP has
> had _forever_.

I feel that. Do you think that, if we merely allowed RSS or Atom, and
did not lean into them as a standard, we would be heading toward a
compatibility problem because a smaller fraction of Gemini pages would
have RSS or Atom feeds? If so, could that be offset by the way
simplicity might encourage more users to create content?

> I still feel like this is NIH, but I'm not a CAPCOM or Spacewalk author
> so a decision like this  isn't my place. As long as we continue to have
> Atom/RSS support, that's all I'd like. I guess if there is a broader
> move to Gemtext feeds, there should be pretty simple methods available
> to convert those into Atom-compatible feeds.

I wouldn't say we're inventing anything… You maybe understood this
already, but I'm not sure whether I was clear: I'm not suggesting we
create a new feed format that happens to have syntax in common with
Gemtext. I'm suggesting that Gemtext, because it contains links, already
is a feed if you interpret it that way.

But anyway, yes, I think aggregators and feed readers should continue to
use RSS and Atom and JSON Feed and would not want that to change.

(Sorry for the repeat email; I failed to send it to the list address.)