17 votes

Topic deleted by author

6 comments

  1. [5]
    unknown user
    Link
    Apparently this website's webmaster doesn't take accessibility particularly seriously, though; I can't read this on mobile, there's too much horizontal scrolling.

    Apparently this website's webmaster doesn't take accessibility particularly seriously, though; I can't read this on mobile, there's too much horizontal scrolling.

    6 votes
    1. cmccabe
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      This is gopher content [1] accessed through a gopher-to-web proxy. It wasn’t designed for web viewing in the first place. Gopher is an old tcp/ip protocol that was an early rival to the www. It is...

      This is gopher content [1] accessed through a gopher-to-web proxy. It wasn’t designed for web viewing in the first place. Gopher is an old tcp/ip protocol that was an early rival to the www. It is still around with a (relatively small) active userbase that like it particularly because it is not like the www. The new gemini protocol tries to create an intermediary place between gopher’s simplicity and the www’s ability to be visually and ethically abusive to users.

      [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

      Edit: I should have mentioned that the original, gopher address of this document is here: gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/~solderpunk/gemini But you'll need a gopher client to view it. If you are on a Linux machine and have the lynx browser installed, you can use that.

      5 votes
    2. spctrvl
      Link Parent
      Reader mode in Firefox mobile does the trick pretty well.

      Reader mode in Firefox mobile does the trick pretty well.

      2 votes
    3. [2]
      Silbern
      Link Parent
      It's plain text with a minimal amount of coloring and formatting. Quite frankly, I think the responsibility for properly formatting this belongs to your phone's web browser, not the website. Does...

      It's plain text with a minimal amount of coloring and formatting. Quite frankly, I think the responsibility for properly formatting this belongs to your phone's web browser, not the website. Does your browser have a reformat mode? I use Opera on Android, and it has a specific feature you can enable that always reformats webpages so you never have to horizontally scroll.

      1. unknown user
        Link Parent
        The browser I use (like all browsers!) is also perfectly capable of wrapping text, but not when it's been explicitly told not to: this website inserts all its text into <pre> tags, which forbids...

        The browser I use (like all browsers!) is also perfectly capable of wrapping text, but not when it's been explicitly told not to: this website inserts all its text into <pre> tags, which forbids the browser from altering how it's displayed.

        2 votes
  2. mftrhu
    Link
    I like this, but there are a few pain points I can see. Text can be reflowed following RFC 1896 rules, which is good as it fixes a major Gopher pain point, but that would completely break ASCII...

    I like this, but there are a few pain points I can see.

    Text can be reflowed following RFC 1896 rules, which is good as it fixes a major Gopher pain point, but that would completely break ASCII art and code blocks.

    This might be seen as good, or at least not bad, and an "abuse" of the system to do layouting, but I think there should be a third type, for lines of text that should be displayed verbatim and in a monospaced font. I'm not sure what could be used to denote that. One or more spaces before the rest of the line, maybe, or a pipe character (|).

    A maximum URL length of 1024 bytes seems also limiting, especially if that needs to include user input: it could result in input being arbitrarily truncated, without the client knowing about it. I also don't like very much how user input is handled, and I'd prefer a type/selector/indicator that would tell the client about it before making the first request.

    Side note: ContNet also aims at filling a similar niche, but it's much more... heavyweight, specifying not just the transport protocol but also a simple markup language and page definition language.

    3 votes