Gurted – A web ecosystem introducing the gurt:// protocol | Hacker News Reader

protocol

gurted.com

42 pointsredbell23 comments

I applaud the effort to devise new internet protocols (there aren't enough and we lose little by adding diversity to a monoculture).

With that being said, I think the front page of the site could do more to explain the benefits and tradeoffs of the protocol without needing to dive into the docs. A paragraph could suffice.

I’m fairly sure this is in jest.

I don't think it is. Did you look at the docs?

After I made my comment I did. I’m not so certain anymore, but given their example search query is “how to eat brick” I am inclined towards thinking it’s a protocol that celebrates farce at least.

Having different protocols that are useful for different purposes and adding diversity to a monoculture could be helpful, but this one doesn't seem to be that good.

It has mandatory TLS (even though I think optional TLS is better), and a mandatory HANDSHAKE command (even though TLS already has the domain name before you can connect), some arbitrary limits, and does not actually add anything that is helpful nor remove many things that should be removed.

It does use a different DNS, although I think this should be done at a different level, rather than specific to the application protocol, and it should not use JSON.

It also uses Lua instead of JavaScript (I looked at the documentation of the provided functions and of its working, and I think it isn't really much of an improvement), and adds a <postprocess> command (which can make it hard to read), etc, but not really much of an improvement.

My opinion is, I think it is not really worth much and is not very good. (There are other things some people (including myself) have done with new protocols, some of which are actually good, but some of them (such as this one) isn't really so good to me.)

Genuine question: Why do you feel optional TLS is better?

The youtube video[0] gives a WAY better introduction to GURT than the website does:

  "This is Gurted — an alternative to the World Wide Web with a custom protocol called GURT
  with enforced encryption, a new DNS with weird domains,
  web browser built in a game engine that doesn’t rely on Chromium,
  capable of running a Minecraft clone, Tetris,  complex UIs, all powered by HTML, CSS, and...
  Lua."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392233

Oh, of course its Face Dev!

Feels silly to link to the project without linking to the youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJsH7AdLmUA&pp=0gcJCfYJAYcqI...

"Flumi, the wayfinder of Gurted, is created in Godot - the game engine." gives strong Microservices by Krazam vibes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ

This looks like an attempt to reinvent HTTP and HTML, but I'm not entirely certain that I grok why it's useful. It feels like a developer-centric approach.

I'm reminded of another project called Gemini[0], which aims to solve a similar problem in a different way. The Gemini protocol is very, very simple to implement (with the exception that it uses mandatory modern encryption like Gurted does, so you need encryption libraries), and it's intentionally difficult to extend, in an effort to make it a simpler and more efficient alternative to the Web that is resistant to takeover by corporate desires, in a way that I'm not sure Gurted achieves.

[0] https://geminiprotocol.net/

I take it this is a joke?

Looks like an approach to reinvent current web standards in slightly different, but fundamentally the same way. If one wants to reinvent it, why not do it properly? Why it's TCP-based and not UDP-based? Why using slightly modified HTML instead of some other format, which is faster to process? Why using Lua and not WASM?

It is what I thought too; if it should be reinvented, it should be done properly. (Although, I still think TCP will do; it is not necessary to change it to UDP instead.) Comment 45393083 has some of my comments about this Gurted.

There is another discussion at: gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/SmallWeb/15126 (connect to port 1965 with TLS and send the full URL followed by CRLF)

I think Gemini was designed to be between Gopher and WWW (and it is not so bad, although I would have made the TLS optional instead of mandatory; from my experience, I am not the only one). I designed Scorpion to be between Gemini and "WWW as it should be if it was designed better", which has the result of being neither a subset nor superset of the capabilities of Gemini or of WWW (as well as doing things that I considered to be useful enough to keep, such as range requests (although, for simplicity, I allowed only a single range per request, rather than the multiple ranges per request that HTTP does)).

I also think that it is useful to use different protocols (and different file formats) for different uses; e.g. for some types of games (and for live chat services) it would probably be better to use an interactive session such as Telnet or SSH (or IRC, in the case of chat) rather than using HTTP or Gemini (even though both are used).

Lua on the front end is cool to see. Feels like it could've easily beaten out JS on its merits if history just played out differently. The seasickness simulator on the landing page is unnecessary though.

I hate the way the web site wobbles up and down for no reason. And even after scrolling down to the end of the front page, I don't have any idea why this should be a good idea, or what kind of problems it might solve. Meh!

You've been gurted! zing.

'Gurt' has several meanings, none of them appropriate for a protocol:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gurt

Gurt is a colloquial synonym for “hyper” (The “h” in http).

Seems gurt lush to me.

Uh. The word sounds like... not quite an audible onomatopoeia... but maybe a comic book one for if you stepped in dog poo.

Not sure about this one, seems like it's dead in the water with this name.

"Gurted?" I don't want to be gurted. No.

It's Bristol UK slang. Gurt lush = very nice / beautiful.

Although the author appears to be Moldovan.

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