I recently learn of the Gemini protocol.
What is the Gemini protocol?
"1.1.1 The dense, jargony answer for geeks in a hurry
Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol for the
distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a
lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between hosted files.
Both the protocol and the format are deliberately limited in capabilities and
scope, and the protocol is technically conservative, being built on mature,
standardised, familiar, "off-the-shelf" technologies like URIs, MIME media
types and TLS. Simplicity and finite scope are very intentional design
decisions motivated by placing a high priority on user autonomy, user privacy,
ease of implementation in diverse computing environments, and defensive
non-extensibility. In short, it is something like a radically stripped down web
stack. See section 4 of this FAQ document for questions relating to the design
of Gemini.
1.1.2 The gentler answer for everybody else
Gemini is a group of technologies similar to the ones that lie behind your
familiar web browser. Using Gemini, you can explore an online collection of
written documents which can link to other written documents. The main
difference is that Gemini approaches this task with a strong philosophy of
"keep it simple" and "less is enough".
"
"1.5 What kind of timeless user experience?
In a word, reading!
Reading text with a simple, clear, uncluttered layout without any animation or
embedded videos or sidebars full of distracting, unrelated extras. If you use
the "Reader Mode" in your web browser a lot and you love it because you think
that 99% of the time it makes webpages ten times easier to use by throwing out
all the useless clutter and just giving you what you want, you'll probably be
excited to hear that everything in Geminispace looks that way all the time by
default.
"
"1.6 So it's just words, then? No pictures, no sound?
Not quite. Like HTTP or Gopher, Gemini can serve any filetype at all, including
images, audio, video and computer programs. There are tens of thousands of
images in Geminispace, about five thousand PDF documents, and thousands of
audio files!
But the only thing that a Gemini document can do with those files is link to
them. You can't embed images or videos inside a page, sticking them in the
background or between bits of text. Nothing ever plays automatically. All you
can do is say to your reader, "Hey, here's a link to a picture, or a video, or
some music". It's up to them whether they click the link or not - in
Geminispace, the reader is always in control, not the author. "
I am writing this here, because I believe the low-resource needed to run a
Gemini Browser is appropriate for FreeDOS.
Well, I guess FreeDOS could allow for Gemini server too, but because it would
be the only application running on FreeDOS, it is probably not much interesting.
I think it could be interesting to consider doing a Gemini set of pages ...
(they have a fancy name for that in Gemini community, but I don't find it now)
for the FreeDOS project.
And also consider porting one of the Gemini client to FreeDOS... there is a
list on the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
Basically... this message is for considering this "new" technology inside
FreeDOS project.
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
