Gemtext Layout Best Practices

If you haven’t read about my Gemini page templates to see different ideas implemented with commentary, you should do this first.

Gemini Page Templates

Problems

Problem: No inline links.

Links in-between paragraphs feel a little disassociated and might not fit because of the linked title.

Solution: Small paragraphs.

Have the sentence, which links to another page, be its own paragraph. Links are more associated with the content, and mis-fitting titles wonʼt confuse as much.

Problem: Minimalistic appeal clashes with usability.

Missing navigation can trip people up.

Solution:

Have a home link at the top and the bottom of the page. GUI clients benefit more from the bottom link, where readers are after reading the post. The problem for TUI users is, that the bottom-most link will always have a different number associated with it, sometimes even double-digits, which is cumbersome to use. But the top-most link is always the “1”, which established brain-muscle-memory.

Problem: GUI and TUI clients clash.

They use different interface metaphors. Helpful text-markup is sometimes clashing with GUI, sometimes clashing with TUI.

Solution: No good one.

It is a reminder, that the client is solely responsible for the markup of elements. Manual markup shouldnʼt exist in a text-only format, because it adds markup to content.

Problem: Long link lists between paragraphs.

Sometimes, consecutive paragraphs interspersed with a link – more like a list – doesnʼt look good.

Solution: Live with it.

Trying to separate those with doubled empty lines might look somewhat better, but then this has to be used in other, but not all, situations as well. In the end, it will be applied unevenly and is a nuisance to maintain.

My Take

Gemtext/Gemini is well suited for self-contained posts with a headline, some paragraphs, and almost no links. The minimalistic beauty shines. We have to let go of learned World Wide Web behavior and just publish some text and not worry about anything technical.

Just donʼt use ASCII art, because it destroys legibility for people using screen readers.