What I like and dislike about Gemini

This is about the protocol and text format, not the community or content.

What I’ve come to like and dislike about Gemini after two years isn’t necessarily what I thought I’d like. Some have stayed the same, some have changed.

I like it enough that I read the Gemini version of sites that are bihosting.

Like

I love that all styling is client side. No font-size, no bad color taste.

I love that all code / scripting is server side. No JavaScript, no creepy stuff.

I’ve come to like that links are on their own lines.

TLS only. Main reason why I’m not on Gopher or Spartan or Mercury.

Neutral

No inline formatting. I hated this at first but quickly came to see the many advantages. No erroneously unclosed tags, and a calm, uninterrupted reading experience. Emotionally, I’ve pretty much come to see it as a “like”, but I’d better leave it in “neutral” since I might be unconsciously sour-grape–ing it (adapting to a limitation, Stockholm syndrome style).

Dislike

That it’s an entirely different protocol still doesn’t feel like a solution to “the web is too complex” problem. Adding Gemini support to my homepage felt pretty much the same as adding Atom support to it. A few days of homework and hacking that I now “had” to do. The site became more complex, not less. Improved, sure—I’m glad people are reading over Atom and over Gemini—but not simpler. Added to, not stripped down.

Protocol limitations such as downloading large files or streaming.

People’s workarounds like number links1 and *asterisks*. Every time I see ‘em I’m like “Maybe Gemini does need inline formatting or inline links after all since these workarounds are the worst of both worlds”. That might be a sign of an issue with the format.

Lack of tables for data. I used to love using tables before I went on here. They’re great for RPG stuff.

Backtick fencing for pre lines. Not only would I prefer the four spaces syntax from original Markdown for readability, wouldn’t that also be easier to parse? You wouldn’t need to keep track of as much state.

I think overall my feelings aren’t super healthy. It’s like… Gemini gave me a taste of control of how the text I read should look, and every time something scrapes up against those limits, it bugs me. The parts of me that like Gemini are the control freak parts, and those parts are bristling at what they can’t control.

Jeff adds:

> But this is not the protocol for sending real files. I’d use ftp or http or torrents. Something Gemini allows you to do.

If this means that Gemini allows you to have links to ftp or web servers, or to torrent files, then yeah. Not that I’ve seen that happen a lot on here. I think overall I just wish we had been able to figure out a “tools, not standards” approach instead. Although a tool that gives us all the benefits of Gemini might not have been possible in a secure way. A subset of web tech is not enough; we’d also need a way to sieve out non-compliant sites.

Tools vs standards