A Gemini-style proposal

[Byron Torres]

On Mon Nov 1, 2021 at 2:35 PM GMT, DJ Chase wrote:
> On Mon, 2021-11-01 at 12:41 +0100, Alex Schroeder wrote:
> > I’d say no. The functionality of Gemini is pretty much done.
>
> Also, that's not line-oriented.
>
> > People are of course free to write their own clients that do their own
> > processing. But the standard is: if you need that, serve Markdown or
> > HTML documents instead of extending Gemtext.
>
> Side note: I think it's best to serve PDFs instead of other markup
> languages because everyone can view PDFs.

I'd say serving PDFs would be the grand overkill. PDFs have their own
purpose, built for print.

> Many people don't have a markdown viewer/compiler installed, and
> serving HTML is, in my opinion, overkill for Gemini.

Who's to say installing a Gemini client shouldn't come with a dependency
like a CommomMark compiler or similar? Even if there are different
Markdown standards, the differences are minimal and circumventable. I
can imagine a dropdown menu with a selection of Markdown "flavours".

One should also not limit our imagination to what currently exists.
Perhaps in a typical desktop application suite, a markdown viewer should
be included, and we should make a community effort to make that normal.

> DJ Chase
> They, Them, Theirs