Community for the appreciation and sharing of links, resources, and culture of: the smol web / small web / ~(w)~ / the indie web / or even the non-www internet (gemini, gopher, etc).
Back of a napkin definition, subject to change: if it's internet accessible and is maintained by a person, especially for non-commercial aims, then I would consider it smol. There are, however, much stricter definitions.
Long story short. Gemini was designed to be a static technology.... It got released, and that's the end. No more progress, no more features. Immediately people were frustrated with a lack of options, so people started adding on custom ways of doing things which were missing.... Suddenly lots of completing features in custom solutions arrived and with that the concept died.
The projects static goal was interesting but doomed from the beginning.
Hey, I'm new to the current reimagining of the small web. I remember the days of BBS through GeoCities, and while I was never active on gopher, I was aware of it.
I just learned it's still in use, and learned Gemini was a thing. I've been looking around trying to see of I could self host something, but a lot of what I found seems abandoned, which kinda corresponds to what you were talking about.
Anyway, in your opinion, is this something still viable, or was it a flash in the pan? Should I venture down the rabbit hole, or is it too late?
I'm old enough to have used gopher back in the day and it was neat and simple to use, bit of a pain in the arse to setup. Gemini is not bad, but yeah it's pretty abandoned now. Id skip and move on to other interesting things. Like REBOL....
Not sure, but I think almost everyone just switched to Lagrange for a graphical browser. And within the scope of a "read-only document distribution protocol", it's more-or-less finished.
I regularly post to my technical blog, and read the Antenna aggregator (although personally I prefer elpher for a client).
I like Lagrange so far. Didn't know there was an Android version, but it's running pretty good. What's your blogs gemini URL?
A bit late, but it's gemini://republic.circumlunar.space/users/dbane/gemlog/ I'd recommend starting with Antenna instead though.
Thanks. Antenna is already in my bookmarks.
@squirrel The peak of interest in Gemini passed around that 2 years ago mark. The idea of "scrap this edifice and let's see if we can do without" is not currently in zeitgeist, and the AI debacle became the trendy thing. (and stole the "Gemini" name too)
When the AI bubble explodes, I expect we'll see another wave of interest.
The idea of “scrap this edifice and let’s see if we can do without”
That's what I found confusing about Gemini - its goals aren't incompatible with HTTP but it's deliberately trying to be incompatible with HTTP, apparently just for the sake of being different and not any technical reasons.
To answer the original question of "What's up with Gemini development" it seems that interest has waned because building something that's deliberately incompatible with existing systems isn't going to maintain broad appeal and get people creating and using content and software on the system.
99% of the goal could be done in a web-compatible way by just having a way to declare that any site is "gemini-like" or "gopherish" by enforcing a Gopher-style hierarchy on the site, using a restricted subset of HTML (and semantic use of markup), minimal or no CSS (e.g. Smolweb's CSS Grading), no font embeds, no images, no JS, no videos. The remaining 1% could be done with a browser extensions that activate on any such page and provide gopher-style map/menu navigation with the keyboard.
@budget_biochemist There was a technical reason, though. It was specifically that HTTP/HTML have become too extensive to actually implement afresh and consumed everything. Making something impossible to extend beyond a certain point was the explicitly stated goal, and that goal is impossible to reach with a defined subset of HTTP/HTML, precisely because it would be a subset, and thus the extant superset would be its extension.
It's a very (and needlessly) radical logic, but it is consistent.
@squirrel Lagrange is available for Android (and has its own F-Droid repo).
Interesting. I found the apk on https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/ now. I tried the F-Droid repo, but it's not the latest version. I'll try the apk. Thank you!