Should Gemini clients alert users upon redirect?

[Gary Johnson]

Hi folks,

I am the author of a Gemini server called Space Age.

=> https://gitlab.com/lambdatronic/space-age/

When I submitted my server for inclusion on the "Gemini software" list
(gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/software/), Solderpunk wrote to me to
explicitly verify that my server redirected clients who requested
slashless URLs to their slashed equivalents. He pointed out that any
relative URLs in the returned Gemtext would not behave as expected in
most clients when navigating away from a slashless parent page.
Therefore, server redirection of slashless URLs was mandatory for Gemini
servers.

Given this requirement, I believe the standing recommendation to authors
of Gemtext pages is to always include slashes in your links in order to
prevent page redirects and speed up loading time for your users.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Happy hacking,
  Gary


Sandra Snan <sandra.snan at idiomdrottning.org> writes:

> mailinglists at ngalt.com writes:
>> It was.
>
> Thank you so much for reading my stuff♥♥
> Much apprec♥
>
>> I'd be _very_ happy to read arguments in favor of slashless.
>
> It is a way to write future-proof links that work on both dynamic and
> static content.
>
> This is a site that has survived several CMS changes and has been up
> with the same look for 11 years.
>
> Earlier version of Jekyll allowed slashless without redirecting, not
> sure how it worked but it stopped working so I've altered my nginx conf
> to just serve them as directories with index.html files, and Molly of
> course has index.gmi out of the box. I didn't want to change my linking
> style from the old site in the hopes that one day I'll have a CMS that
> once more has slashless URLs.
>
> The _counter_ argument to that, then, is that dynamic url routers could
> be configured to add faux slashes back in to match. And that's a good
> counter-argument. Anything you can do to make your site consistent is
> good. And the dynamic portion of my site (the Fedi frontent) currently
> does allow faux trailing slashes.
>
> Bogan's text was written in 2002 and his own site has, as you point out,
> had some rough times when it comes to consistency:
>> Time and CMS changes have not been good to the article. You'll need to
>> hover over the links in the code snippets and look at your
>> link-preview bar/popup to see what he's talking about.
>
> He wrote that before nginx came out, in the Apache era. Nginx just
> serves the file right up without a bunch of redirects (hopefully—I
> haven't triple checked that).
>
> Now, I do appreciate you alerting me that Molly does do the similar
> shenanigans that
>
> Bogan describes:
>> Just a minute; first I’ll try to find a file called ‘subdirectory.’ …
>> Wait a second; it’s not there! How about a directory called
>> ‘subdirectory?’ … Ah, here we go. Okay. And next time, please use a
>> trailing slash.
>
> That's something I would hope could change in future versions of Molly.
>
> Also, my capsule might not always be on Molly. (Even though it's a
> fantastic server.♥)
>
> The bottom line is that the indented external semantics is that requests
> are asking for content, and those requests should be separated from the
> specific implementation, such as file system representation.


-- 
GPG Key ID: 7BC158ED
Use `gpg --search-keys lambdatronic' to find me
Protect yourself from surveillance: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org
=======================================================================
()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against proprietary attachments

Please avoid sending me MS-Office attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html