[ANN] Scalar, an experiment for a minimalist chat protocol inspired by Gemini

[Simon Heath]

Hi, all.  Pardon me if this is a little off-topic, it was suggested I
share this here.  I got annoyed at Matrix's complexity and IRC's
idiosyncracies, and said "I wish there were something like Gemini for
chat protocols".  So I decided to take a weekend and try to make
something like that, and after going over my time budget by a factor of
eight or so I ended up with something I call Scalar: 
https://sr.ht/~icefox/scalar/

It's very WIP still, but there's a minimum viable product specification
and implementation, with much more emphasis on "minimum" than "viable".
However, it's proof that the idea works, and carrying on the design of
the protocol is pretty straightforward. I can't *quite* bring myself to
design something as hardcore minimalist as Gemini, but I still hope it
meets Gemini's design criteria.  No idea if I will keep working on it
in the immediate future, but maybe it will inspire interesting
discussion.

Thanks a lot,
Simon