(05-01-2021, 07:39 AM)prx* Wrote: Yan can write plaintext or any format, text/gemini with gopher is what html is to http. That's all.

And nothing prevents someone to use gemini to serve an actual website.

(05-01-2021, 07:39 AM)prx* Wrote: TLS is required for privacy. I find it nice to think about it at the very first level, before doing anything else.

Yeah. Well, I think it's crap. It's crap for debugging your server (or client) for a start, it's crap to not be able to reuse existing programs which only do that layer (this allows to change program if buggy/slow, to change encryption protocol easily when it's broken, to, well, let the really complex TLS stuff to people actually understanding how it works in depth, and no, using TLS libs is not simple, just see how many there are which all tries to address that problem...).
Encryption layers break "often enough" so that I think it's a bad idea to do that. Not to mention the weight of TLS, which requires TCP and few other fun stuff (if only I kept those links from when I did actual research on encryption protocols...).
But yes, I see that from a dev's PoV.
I would not implement a gemini server for production, clearly. Either I would use someone else's to hide when things break, or I would implement it without TLS, thus not being a conformant server, and rely on hitch, for example, to do that (which is what I do with my darkhttp instances, mind you).

Quote: Why a F**king Transfer Protocol should define a damn file format?
To avoid JS/AJAX/CSS/fonts... gemini is designed to remain simple and light.

It's not.
If it was designed to be simple and light, gemini would be a collection of technologies, as are the web or UEFI. It would then say something like:

```
gemini-compliant systems (not softwares, systems) are comprised of: 1) a security layer, considering current version of gemini specs requires at least TLS 1.2 and prefer higher ones 2) a file transfer protocol documented in [...] and 3) a file format to represent documents documented in [...].
```

That's not what it does.
And nothing that it does prevents the use of JS/AJAX/CSS/fonts, actually. Because, well, it's simply not possible (and would be stupid to even try, too).
It tries to discourage it, yes. But it's just that: tries to discourage.

Basically, nothing prevent a client to pre-load files referenced in the file you're reading (it would be silly to do so, but we could also have http client not doing it: the problem is that they are used to do it).

So, no, gemini is not simple. It's just a modern gopher, which, considering the goal of non-evolution, will deprecate too. Programs (clients and servers) will, for most of those, *require* active maintenance only to keep up with the TLS layers, which implies higher chances of using no longer safe programs.