MIME type toggle lines

Katarina Eriksson gmym at coopdot.com
Sun Sep 13 14:40:24 BST 2020


Hello Geminauts

While reading the alt text discussion, I noticed the use of MIME types in
the alt text. Without calling anyone out or accuse anyone for wanting this,
I want to point out a thing.

Consider this text/gemini document:

This text is text/gemini but soon enough we will encounter a toggle line
```
This is after the toggle line, so now we're in text/plain mode
```
Another toggle line, so we are back in text/gemini mode

[eof]

This interpretation of the spec is fine, how about this modification:

This text is text/gemini but soon enough we will encounter a toggle line
``` text/plain
This is after the toggle line, so now we're in text/plain mode
``` text/gemini
Another toggle line, so we are back in text/gemini mode

[eof]

The only change is adding information about the default behavior, let's dig
deeper:

This text is text/gemini but soon enough we will encounter a toggle line
``` text/csv
This is after the toggle line, but instead of defaulting to text/plain
mode, this is text/csv with 3 columns
```
Another toggle line, so we are back in text/gemini mode

[eof]

Here, the first toggle has been extended for use of other text types. This
is already outside of what I think is the intention of the spec, but there
is another level:

This text is text/gemini but soon enough we will encounter a toggle line
```
This is after the toggle line and since we left text/gemini, we're now in
text/plain mode
``` text/csv
Another toggle line, but instead of going back to text/gemini mode, this is
text/csv with 3 columns
```
Yet another toggle line and the previous mode wasn't text/gemini, so we are
finally back in text/gemini mode

[eof]

Here we have 4 sections: gemini, plain text, csv and then gemini again.
This behavior is not what the clients following the current spec would
expect but can be amended with an extra toggle line between the plain text
and csv sections.

This does not play nice with anything but is along the line of the previous
example.

I want .gmi/.gemini files to be mostly text/gemini with plain text mode
used sparsely and link to other content types. Want a bigger chunk of plain
text? Link it, maybe under an excerpt.

-- 
Katarina
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