Opening of the first modules a new Gemini station

[Frank Jüdes]

1) Yes, similar to that web-site, but i was more inspired by remembering the good ol' FidoNet, where there was a service available that converted a text that you mailed to it into large banners and mailed them back to you. Very funny in the '90s where the internet was something for "scientists" and "nerds"…

I did not know that it is possible to label pre-formatted paragraphs (should have read the protocol spec more thoroughly 😊), but it totally makes sense and i have changed the Large Characters and the Box-Tool to add labels to the pre-tags, like this:

> ## 📦 Design: "capgirl"
> ``` ASCII-art text: "Another Visitor!\nStay a While...\nStay FOREVER!"
>

2) Yeah: The dreaded Unicode!

I am so *done* with that discussion! 😠

The first version of Unicode was published in 1991, *30* years ago! The first Emoji symbols were included in 2010, 11 years ago, that should have been enough time for screen-readers or terminal-clients to implement an adequate handling. Every Unicode character is registered in the Unicode Database <https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/search.htm?q=duck&preview=entity> with a formal name and a description, which could be used by a screen-reader to say something like »Pictogram of a DUCK«. I am not experienced with screen-readers or braille terminals, but how would those deal with for example fractions ½ ¼ ¾ ?

It is similar with the bold or italic Unicode characters, they have descriptive names like »MA­THE­MA­TI­CAL*BOLD*CA­PI­TAL A«, so a screen-reader could very well understand "bold" text and act accordingly.

Heck! Even the dreaded Windows *notepad.exe* can display Unicode characters without problems now! (If the font-permits!) 👌

I do understand, however that many people wish to use terminal-like clients like amfora or the new Romulus client and those indeed have a real problem with most Unicode characters. I assume this is more of a problem with the Windows terminal-emulation and M$ is already working to fix this (see: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-command-line-unicode-and-utf-8-output-text-buffer/ ), at least some Unicode can be displayed by amfora and Romulus, for example the tables do work (see: gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/DBTableTest/orcl/SHADOW/Y ).

As a compromise, i have removed all Unicode "formatted" text from my capsule, except for the eye-candy symbols. Those will stay because all the graphical browsers i have tested have no issues with those (OK, Geminaut has some…) and they actually bare no additional information, they just make the text a bit more nicer to look at.

BTW: The Gemini protocol definition is very explicit in the use of the UTF-8 encoding (see: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi 3.3 Response bodies)

> If a MIME type begins with "text/" and no charset is explicitly given, *the charset should be assumed to be UTF-8*.*Compliant clients MUST support UTF-8-encoded text/* responses*.
I am using LaGrange and Kristall on Windows to access Gemini sites and both browsers have no issues with Unicode characters at all, Geminaut displays some pictograms, but some others not and i haven't discovered a pattern yet.

Will start to test clients running on Lunix... 😎

Best regards from Charleston (WV),
     Frank/2

On 2021-05-19 13:05, nervuri wrote:
> On Tue, 2021-05-18, Frank Jüdes wrote:
>> 1. 🖨 Large Characters
>>    Easily create flashy banner-texts in many different fonts with the
>>    this utility: It reads your text and prints it out in all 290
>>    installed character-sets, ready for you to copy and past into your
>>    own page. ➡ gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/figlet
>
> Nice.  Similar to https://www.patorjk.com/software/taag/
>
> But using ASCII-art and stylized Unicode characters has accessibility
> implications that have been discussed at length on this list [1] and
> elsewhere [2].  The output of your Unicode Text Converter [3] doesn't
> play well with screen readers, so please add a notice pointing this out.
> Also, it's good practice to label preformatted blocks that contain ASCII
> art in the same way you would add an "alt" attribute to an HTML <img>
> tag.  Example:
>
> ``` ASCII-art text: "test"
> _            _
> | |_ ___  ___| |_
> | __/ _ \/ __| __|
> | ||  __/\__ \ |_
> \__\___||___/\__|
>
> ```
>
> [1] https://mailing-list-archive.gemi.dev/www/2021/005631.html
> [2] gemini://ew.srht.site/en/2021/20210411-upd-re-your-gemlog-may-not-be-accessible.gmi
> [3] gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/cgi-bin/UnicodeText
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My Gemini capsule orbits at gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net/
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