[tech] [spec] On extending gemini

[Nathan Galt]

> On Feb 22, 2021, at 11:38 PM, Stephane Bortzmeyer <stephane at sources.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 07:16:26PM -0500,
> Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote 
> a message of 178 lines which said:
> 
>> Gemini *is* an expansion of gopher, not
>> a reimagining of the web.  Citing primary sources here (Solderpunk himself):
>> 
>> gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/pondering-whats-inbetween-gopher-and-the-web.txt
>> 
>> 	It's no secret, of course, that I love gopher.
> 
> While the historical debate is very interesting (I wasn't there, and I
> love to learn about how things became what they are), it does not help
> a lot with current discussions such as "should we extend Gemini with
> this or that?" I guess (just a guess: no social scientist made a
> serious survey of geminists yet) that most geminauts today never used
> Gopher and even do not know about it. They want something better than
> the Web for some usages and they do not refer to an old protocol.
> 
> Gemini faces a strategic issue: is it a system for a few Gopher
> nostalgics or is it something that may be presented and promoted to a
> wider audience? (No, I don't target "world domination".)
> 

This assumes, of course, that Gemini isn?t fine the way it is.

I only used Gopher a tiny bit back when it was a contender, but every time I?ve looked at running a Gopher anything I?ve run away in disgust and fear from the hard-wrapped 80-column lines with the leftmost column taken up by line-type directives. I wouldn?t even know _how_ to write pages like that without going bonkers. Gemini, meanwhile, is _very_ familiar to someone who?s written HTML and Markdown: Write text files, upload via scp.

Sneering at Gopher fans isn?t particularly helpful here.