a space case for transparent gemtext compression

[PJ vM]

A bit of a recap and my thoughts:

* Compression is not going to be in the protocol; this is a bad idea for
multiple reasons, already pointed out.
* Authors can of course offer a compressed version of a gemtext document
alongside the uncompressed version. It remains to be seen how many
people would make use of the compressed version (depends, one might
suppose, on people's internet speeds and how long the document in
question is).
* Client software could in theory recognise a compressed gemtext file,
decompress it and display it as normal, giving the user the same
experience as with a normal gemtext file. Probably not many clients will
have this functionality, but who knows.
* Part of the goal with Gemini's simplicity is to avoid implementation
monoculture, so it is reasonablye to say for many users not using the
most featureful client. However, given the great variety in Gemini
users, I think a monoculture will be avoided anyway, and a feature like
automatic handling of compressed gemtext will never become mandatory. I
don't think proposing a feature that clients may implement is a threat
to Geminispace.

Some people should reflect on what they said in this discussion and how
they said it: what parts of it were helpful and what parts weren't.
Maybe they can avoid a similar mess in the future. Moving on...

On 19/06/2021 10:59, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> * how the end user of a browser without compression support will know
> in advance if the file is compressed or not? From the file extension?
> It is not always present.

I expect authors would indicate this in the link text. So:

=> article.gmi my article
=> article.gmi.gz my article (compressed version)

> * today, every browser can read every Gemini file. Your proposal
> seems to imply that some users will now see only a part of the
> Geminispace, the uncompressed one. This is the same problem we have
> when trying to use the Web with lynx or dillo: we can see only a part
> of it.

First of all, people are already serving PDFs &c via Gemini, which is
also something that Gemini is intended for. So already, not the entire
Geminispace is visible from within the Gemini client.

Secondly, I'd expect that authors offer a compressed version only in
addition to the uncompressed version, not as a replacement. I don't see
this feature becoming nearly popular enough for authors to start doing
the latter.

-- 
pjvm