Comment by cytzol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cytzol | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I disagree, and I'm a little bit insulted.

I'm pretty much in Gemini's exact target market: my websites are simple and almost entirely text, with no tracking, minimal JavaScript, and a hefty CSP. I like implementing simple network protocols and I'm annoyed with the ever-increasing complexity of the Web. And I write command-line software, so Gemini is right up my alley. So when I first heard of it, about a year ago, I was really excited for there to be a new way to convert my sites to this new, simpler hypertext–

But when I tried it, it didn't let me build the sort of site that I, personally, would want to read.

• The documentation sites for my software (https://specsheet.software, https://dns.lookup.dog, https://the.exa.website) all feature inline code samples, complete with the colours you'll see in your terminal. Being able to see an example command and then see its exact output really helps me learn a tool, and I wish more programs were documented in this way. When I re-wrote the documentation as man pages, it was like going from colour to black-and-white, and when I Gemini-ified the documentation, it felt like I was reading man pages.

• My personal home page has blog posts that use styles to sound like the way I talk. I emote. I emphasise. I bold important sentences, and shove side-notes to the side. If I'm writing technically, I'll include charts and side-tables of data. And, again, I like to include syntax-highlighted code snippets and images where appropriate.

I'm not a marketer. I abhor advertising. I'm not trying to usurp the world's communications channel for my own gain. I'm just trying to publish content I want to see more of, and my attempts at offering a Gemini version resulted in exactly zero pages.

This is why it disappoints me when you say this:

> The rest of the web is either (1) best served some other way or (2) not worth keeping.

Do you really think I belong with "the rest of the web"? Or do you think my sites are not worth keeping?

>all feature inline code samples

Supported

>complete with the colours

I don't want your colors in my terminal. Gemini is a user-agent, and this time we actually mean it. It's not a developer-agent or vendor-agent. You provide the content and the client provides the presentation, by design, and if you don't like it, then you are missing the point. I looked at your HTML pages and I find the colors uncomfortable to read.

>My personal home page has blog posts that use styles to sound like the way I talk. I emote. I emphasise. I bold important sentences.

Use asterisks and underscores and slashes then, like we've all managed to do just fine since the dawn of the internet.

>Do you really think I belong with "the rest of the web"? Or do you think my sites are not worth keeping?

No. I think your websites are suited to Gemini, but you don't understand what Gemini is trying to do. Your tools seem to be bizzarely obsessed with colors, though, so I can understand why you would recoil at the idea that a document format might not invite you to its party.

> Your tools seem to be bizzarely obsessed with colors, though

Y'know, for some reason, I get that a lot.

The point you seem to have missed, though, is that I'm a user too. I want a user-agent to view the things that I, a user, want to see, and those things are colours and bold and italics. I don't want to have the flashiest site around to wow everyone; I want to see more sites like mine. My content has colours and formatting and images, where they're a part of the content, not merely its presentation; and one of my tools is doing very well, so even if you don't agree with it, there are enough people that do to make it worth my while.

And if Gemini ever gains the requisite capabilities, I won't be offended if you turn the colours off. It's your right as a user, too.

I know that one of the goals of Gemini is not just to have a protocol with no tracking, but to have a protocol where no tracking can sneak in. Looking at the state of the Web right now, that's a laudable goal. The same goes for having a simple easy-to-implement protocol, which formatting would throw a wrench right in the middle of.

But if that's the case — if not being able to have my preferred Gemini experience is considered "collateral damage" because Gemini prioritises other features than my favourite ones — then please just say that, rather than insinuating that I don't count, or don't understand. I'm trying to engage with you as a "netizen" (I haven't used that word for a decade), and you reply with "this time we actually mean it", as though there are sides in a fight. I don't want to be stuck with the Web any more than you do.

Then use a client which makes things look like that! You can specify annotate your code snippets in the Gemtext markup format, you know, just encourage people to put "lang:C" or "lang:Go" there and write a client which adds highlighting.

The web has limitations, too. You work within them.

Your website specifically says that Gemini intentionally isn't extensible and that any such attempts are shunned by the mailing list. This sounds like the same fragmentation disaster that we had with the web.. An Internet Explorer comes a long, has a certain killer feature, everyone starts using that new client, other clients need to adapt the feature if they want to stay relevant..

So as somebody who also works on very minimalistic, static sites, I don't see your philosophy working out, based on history.

Your aversion to even typography is also not user friendly. You claim it is, but in the end it's just all about you. You do not consider what most people consider a "document".

Gemini clients can, and do, take typography seriously. They don't let you do typesetting. And in either case - the web is famously bad at this, compared to, say, TeX.

You always work within your limitations, no matter what the platform is.

> ". Your tools seem to be bizzarely obsessed with colors, though"

Ah, there it is. The "you don't need that feature" attitude that made desktop Linux the roaring success it is today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com