Proposal to drop double slashes from URL syntax

[Daniel Nagy]

My initial mail should have made that clearer. I was not talking 
about removing
the double-slashes of every link you can find in a Gemtext 
document. I was only
talking about gemini URI scheme links. http links ( and all other 
urls ) should
stay exactly the same as they are.

Also, to my understanding removing them does not violate the 
standard. For
example, `tel:+1-816-555-1212` and `magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:...` are 
valid URIs. A
Gemini browser might choose to recognize those `tel:` and 
`magnet:` links and a
open a locally installed VoiP client or Torrent client 
respectively. My initial
assumption was that some of the simpler parsers might not 
recognize this format.
If they adhere to the URI standard it should be fine.

There is some confusion regarding the terms URI and URL. The W3C 
tries to clear
that up[0]. It used to be that they ment different things in what 
they call the
"classical view" but this difference isn't as dominant anymore in 
the
"contemporary view". In my understanding, a scheme, which would be 
`gemini:`,
can define upon its own what it expects after the colon. You can 
find more
registered schemes here[1], some of which require a double-slash, 
some don't.

Even though the difference seems small, in the amount of links out 
there I think
this small difference can add up.

Best,
Daniel

[0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/#uri-partitioning
[1]: 
https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml

PJ vM <pjvm742 at disroot.org> writes:

>> I want to propose to drop the double slashes from the gemini 
>> URL
>> syntax.
>
> No.
>
> One of the reasons Gemini uses URLs is because the URL syntax is 
> a
> *standard*. Gemtext allows linking to things that are accessible 
> through
> any other protocol for which there exists a URL scheme. In order 
> for a
> different-protocol link to be handled by a client for that 
> protocol, it
> is important that the link is a valid, standard URL. And it does 
> not
> make sense to use nonstandard fake URLs for gemini links and 
> real URLs
> for other protocols.