[tech] dumb vs. dumber

[Björn Wärmedal]

> As this is meant to be a [tech] topic, I have to point out that data: URIs are fully embedded in the text/gemini document itself. Not further network connection is required (assuming self-contained resources).
> 
> To illustrate the point, a popular Gemini custom requires an additional network connection to retrieve a favicon.txt  document containing one UTF8 character for decorative purpose*. Fantastic.

Ugh. Yeah, I’ve seen that. As far as I know only one client supports this (not by default, but by toggling a setting in config). I hope it doesn’t gain traction. Even if it looks nice it seems pretty preposterous to do a full TLS handshake to send a single character at most.

Experiments like this will pop up, but I still think the general gemini community is pretty resilient to it because — as I mentioned earlier — another protocol just does this better.

> An alternative approach would embed such decorative emoji in a data: URI link:
> 
> => data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,8J+QsA== favicon.txt
> => data:text/plain;charset=utf-8,%F0%9F%90%B0 favicon.txt

A better approach, but I think you’d have a hard time getting browser implementers to adopt it.

But yeah, experimentation will happen and that’s a good thing. I just believe that almost none of those experiments will lead to de facto changes of the protocol or gemtext. It’s too hard to convince enough implementers to adopt something. Not like the web world, where Chrome *is* the de facto standard.

Cheers,
ew0k

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