Meeting the Gemini protocol
                                           Sunday, November 24, 2019

I remember my first day here. I was quite confused by the lack of
specifics in the documentation I was finding on the gopher protocol.
What charset should I use? Line terminators? What's the right line
length? Do clients reflow text?

Also, some gopher shortcomings where becoming obvious: really, no
links in text content? really? can you only link to this handful of
content formats? Why just these and not some other set?

Remember going through what I now guess must a new gopher's rite of
passage: abusing gophermap's "i" infolines in order to simulate text
posts with links in them. See 'To "i" or not to "i"' [2], ha!
Also perverting the h file type for fun and for profit was a
distinct temptation.

I promptly ditched these. They were too much of a burden just for
the sake of convenience [fn_1].

I posted some entries here, [1], [2] and [3], to which Solderpunk
kindly replied by email. Most of these are not specified, customary
practice is x, and current conventions are y and z.

Solderpunk! How come you didn't mention Gemini at the time?!

Today I was looking for some better gopher client and found, I think
it was Bombadillo, mentioning Gemini support. hmmm... OK, will have
a look at some other time.

Then, being an emacs user, I came to elpher. What? Gemini protocol
support again? OK then, that was one too many. Let's have a look
at it now.

WHAT A GREAT SURPRISE!
Turns up my above grievances are the very same every one suffers.
Gemini is squarely aimed at solving all of them and more.
Not only that, Gemini is a Circumlunar Space born effort. Brought to
us by none but Solderpunk himself.

Spent some time reading the FAQ, Speculative specification, and Best
practices documents. I have to say I find Gemini to be nearly
perfect, in letter and spirit.

There's a couple details I don't think are actually that good an
idea. I'll leave those for another post.
This one's already way too long.


Foot notes
----------
[fn_1] Mind this concept of 'enduring too much of a burden just for
       the sake of convenience' if you're planning on reading any
       more of my content here. It's gonna be a recurring theme in
       future posts.

References
----------
[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~andram/phlog/rookie_gopher_I.txt
[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~andram/phlog/rookie_gopher_II.txt
[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/~andram/phlog/rookie_gopher_III.txt

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