[Clients] Gemini and accessibility regarding preformatted code blocks

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great John Cowan once stated:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 5:25 PM Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote:
> 
> >         tag       = '@art' / '@code' / '@data' / '@poem'
> 
> We now know what the benefit of @art is.  What are the advantages of the
> other three over no tag?

  A client could style each type differently, even if just a subtle change
in background color.  Or even different monospaced fonts depending upon
usage.  

> > ``` @code
> > x = 5
> > ```
> 
> Shouldn't this be read as if it were "ex equals five"?

  I didn't want to get too wild with the examples, but yes, that sounds fine
to me.  

> ``` @art Obligatory Cat picture
> > cat
> > ```
> 
> Right.

  Didn't want to bother trying to draw an ASCII cat.

> > ``` @data Price list
> > widget  3.45
> > gadget  5.99
> > fob     1.99
> > ```
> 
> Shouldn't this be read as "widget one ninety-nine (pause) gadget five
> ninety-nine (pause) fob one ninety-nine"?  

  It could even be "Row one widget one ninety-nine (pause) row two gadget
five ninety-nine (pause) row three fob one ninety-nine" but I can see the
repeated "row x" could get tiresome.  

> How might a visual browser
> render it differently?
  
  How about alternating light and dark background for each row?  I mean, it
doesn't have to be a jarring contrast like black background/white
background, but black background/dark grey background, just to help visually
separate the records.

> > ``` @poem
> > There once was a person from Nantucket ...
> > ```
> 
> How might a visual browser render this differently?

  No idea on this one, but a screen reader, in theory, could switch voices
for reading poetry.  

  I don't expect this to be standardized any time soon in the spec, as the
spec for text/gemini is line oriented and less with parsing the data in each
line.  But I can certainly see this as something clients slowly converge on,
much like gopher clients supporting selector types not specified in
RFC-1436.

  And the spec does say, "MAY be interpreted ... "

  -spc