[ANN] GemIF - Simple Interactive Fiction engine for Gemini

[Nick Thomas]

On Thu, 2020-12-03 at 23:11 +0000, Norm MacLennan wrote:

> I'm not sure I'm  willing to categorically state all requests must be
> idempotent.

I have the same feeling, but I think it's well-founded. Gemini requests
don't map well to HTTP GET semantics at all - we just don't have the
safety guarantees we need for it.

A simple example - imagine I build a gemini client that prefetches all
links on the current page in the background, for performance. If
they're all HTTP GETs in principle, this is fine.

However, like any bad web 1.0 application that used links + GET instead
of form buttons + POST for actions, my browser will make astrobotany no
fun to play at all, as I simultaneously water, shake, and feed my plant
each time I visit it.

Any given Gemini link may or may not change server-side state, and it's
impossible to tell from protocol-level information. It's not a bad
thing, per se, it just isn't like GETs.

/Nick