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First off I want to clarify that the first half of the title has very little to do with the second half. Sorry about that in advance, @skyjake.
I've had my eye on lagrange for a while - almost since the first day I poked my head into gemini, but for some reason I didn't want to use it despite being very interested in the software. I've been wracking my brain about this for a few days now and I think I sort of have a level of understanding as to why I feel this way.
My first idea - and what I think to at least be a significant portion of why I feel this way - is some kind of "Internalized" elitism? Allow me to elaborate - there's something about the cleanliness, simplicity, and justwerks nature of Lagrange that almost makes me not want to use it. For the record - my client up until today has been Amfora. A terminal-based client. I almost feel like something like gemini shouldn't be able to come in clean and simple to use packages. I don't understand precisely why I feel this way - which lends me to the label of "elitism." Or maybe it's some sort of contrarian approach. Or perhaps elitism is contrarianism with a different mask? Regardless, all I know is there is this unexplainable sense of "too nice" about lagrange. Which sort of brings me to my next idea...
Perhaps part of what is irking my brain about Lagrange is that it *is* easy to use, it *is* clean, it's beautiful looking (I particularly love the design of the UI elements - contrast and borders and such - such a nice contrast from flat design that plagues the world today). For some reason some part of me says that all of this can't be done in a *simple* way, and Gemini is an extremely *simple* protocol. So perhaps part of what is irking my brain here is that it's such a beautiful and potentially complex client for something so simple. It's the same kind of feeling I get when I'm using an IDE to edit a text file. It just feels like overkill, for some reason. That being said - I have not read Lagrange's code. I can't say for certain whether or not it actually is as complicated as my brain seems to be insisting it must be.
Additionally, for my own gemlog, all the posts are written in vim and then uploaded with git. So it's quite possible part of what irks me here is the disparity in the viewing of gemlogs and the writing of gemlogs. That being said, I wouldn't exchange my current approach for anything else in the world. It's simple and effective.
Despite my brain yelling at me and telling me I probably shouldn't be using something like Lagrange for Gemini, I am anyways. I have it open right now, reading a fellow geminaut's gemlog and playing some SpellBinding. I really, really love how simple Lagrange makes it to generate and use client certificates. This was something that was holding me back from some parts of gemini space - not because it's particularly hard, but because it's tedious, particularly with Amfora where you first have to generate the certificate, then edit your config file and assign that certificate to some URLs. Keep in mind that despite the criticism, I do love amfora, and I personally believe it is the best terminal client for Gemini. It's solid software with clearly a lot of love put into it.
As stated before, I love Lagrange's UI. There's contrast with the buttons, the UI is clean, and it stays - largely - out of your way. The UI is quite possibly my favorite part of Lagrange. Whoever had this idea for the styling - probably skyjake - hats off to you, and keep it up!
One thing that does confuse me a bit is the randomized image and color for each page? I'm not entirely sure where it derives the colors and images it should use for each page - but there seems to be some fixed and consistent rules. It makes my own gemlog a mint green which I hate, so I've turned down the saturation all the way to just give me a nice dark mode, albeit with some somewhat out of place green text here and there. I did not see a way to enable or disable this feature, so I would love to see such a toggle added at some point, or if I missed it, please let me know!
As stated before, I am a huge fan of how simple and convenient Lagrange makes it to create and use client certificates, although it has enabled my own laziness just a little, haha. This integration is done very well and this is going to be another hats-off to the contributors from me. Very solid work here.
A solid, objective rating, with none of my weird "it irks me" taken into account?
9/10.
Lagrange is made well, beautiful, fast, and convenient. I am a fan of it. The only thing that brings it down from a 10 is that randomized page color I spoke about before.
If we take my subjective and barely-explainable irks into account?
7/10.
Again, this is due to absolutely no fault of Lagrange, and is entirely down to some nagging feeling in my mind that tells me there's something *wrong* with using Lagrange to read Gemini posts. I'm going to continue attempting to ignore this feeling and trying to enjoy Lagrange, as it is a wonderful piece of software.
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