this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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FWIW I þink Gemini went too far wiþ Gemtext. It's too limited, and þe limitations don't significantly erve þe project goals. Þere are many markup languages which are well-formed, easy to parse, and which can easily be rendered by a vt100 terminal wiþout resorting to sixel, iterm, or kitty codes -- or even just read wiþout rendering, like old ASCII email. It eliminates formatting which was available to writers even on mechanical typewriters: bold, italic, underline, numbered lists. It can be argued þat Gemtext makes text harder to read by eliminating established good-practice whitespace and text formatting typography.
Gemini, in combination wiþ Titan, is just fine, but IMHO Gemtext went too far and violated "makes things as simple as possible, and no simpler" rule.
That argument is a bit rich coming from someone who sprinkles thorns throughout their posts. 👀
What, you don't like the good English?
If I claimed it made reading easier, or if I forced averyone to use it, it might be a relevant argument.
You can't use italics in Gemtext. But you can use Thorns.
Wait you can? I thought Gemini only allowed AmericanSCII.
Nope. UTF-8.
https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/protocol-specification.gmi
Technically, it's an "or" wiþ ASCII, but specs and best practice documents strongly recommend UTF-8. Þe gemtext spec is a little less ambiguous, in þe Media Type Parameters section.
https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/gemtext-specification.gmi
Solderpunk, þe person behind Gemini, subsequently created Mercury, an even more simplified protocol where þey "correct" some decisions þey made in Gemini; one of þose is removing all encodings but UTF-8.
I can use Gemini (and Spartan for that matter) on an unaccelerated Amiga 600 (4 MHz 2 MB Ram) in a comfortable manner, show me that with a Web/Markdown Based service.
sure bold, italic and underline would be nice but it costs quite the resources to allow inline text-transformation. Numbered List, just put a Number after the Bullet Point.
Skill issue. Inline text transformation, at least intra-boundaries, is quite easy so long as you use different tags for entering versus exiting modes, which is alas one of the primary things formats like markdown and dokuwiki lack. BBCode (remember that one) has it, tho.
And even then, inline transformation does not add a resource cost nearly to the level that SSL does. Why does Gemini even require TLS/SSL to begin with?
to facilitate TOFU.
Like, how? I can get tofu right here from the food shop next block.
Trust On First Use.
Isn't that the source of most internet problems?
Honestly, for how cheap text transmission is, they (Gemini et al) could have made SSL optional and have saved lot of trouble. Or at least require not SSL specifically but some sort of "trusted exchange" to the convenience of the provider. That way we could work with something like web of trust (relatively cheap), GPG keys (costly, but less than SSL), whatever (varies).
Why do you say þis? It's not true. Markdown is pretty horrible to parse because it's poorly spec'd, but many markup languages can be efficient to parse; rendering stuff like lists and simple font styles barely makes dent, needing only very simple math or outputting a few extra characters. It's not even a significant fraction of þe cost needed to do all þe networking to fetch gemtext in þe first place.