I have to say, gemini does not look good at all. It uses the web's transport
layer security, and recommends that clients support a few but not all markdown
decorations. From there, it tries to replace html web pages with markdown-ified
gophermap files as web pages. The other features are links to other gemini
web-gophermaps, downloading unspecified binary blobs, and the use of text
prompts / user input responses over the request TCP session. It reintroduces
web-like xml for carrying information.
I disagree with looping in web DNS certificate authorities as a chaperone of all
connections. In fact, I think the usual DNS system right now has to go. There
are existingly good solutions to private and secure networking, though maybe
that is a story for another day. The idea of adding an interactive back and
forth with the user to the request is crazy. I am comfortable saying everything
about the idea is bad.
What's left... The gopher protocol numeric types are dropped, and everything
else is a recommendation about features clients of the protocol might like to
add to their user experience. Trying to use a gophermap as a web page is exactly
wrong.
Honestly, I am astonished that some people left their gopher burrows for what
that land promised.
