Comment by 🚀 jsreed5

@clarahd That is precisely what I worry about. I don't want to see a situation where Gemini technically works with all clients that comply with the spec, but it's functionally useless without clients that implement additions like client-side scripting. Everyone agrees it's a bad idea, but my concern is whether it's technically allowed in the spec. If it is, all it takes is for Gemini to get popular enough, and someone is going to implement it one day.

As an analogy, HTTP and HTML are two different specs, just like Gemini and Gemtext are. By definition, HTTP works perfectly on every Web site--whether the site is Wikipedia or TikTok, if I send an HTTP request, I will get a working HTTP response, and probably an HTML document as well. However, if my client does not support Javascript, then I can't do anything practical with TikTok's working HTTP response and subsequent HTML document. This "working but useless" trap is what we all want Gemini to avoid.

If we interpret the spec as allowing scripts, then capsules can implement scripting all they want, and Gemini will "work" as the spec is written. We then run the risk of Gemtext (and therefore Geminispace) becoming "useless" for clients that don't use the scripts.

Jul 02 · 6 months ago

1 Later Comment

@jsreed5 Oh I see that's what your point was, but I guess I got triggered by the mere MUSING of extensions to Gemini/gemtext, lol.

It just irks me - at one time I got by with a 100MB/month data plan with OperaMini - now these webpages that I have to switch over to Fennec for, for what value added? Menus?? That couldn't have been HTML? And now 100MB eaten up like that.grrr..

Original Post

Experiments with client-side scripting — I don't have time for an in-depth post about this, but a few hot takes: I agree with @clseibold that this is not really in line with the Gemini specification. In practice, there is little value to be gained. Client-side environments are too varied (from GUI to terminal, desktop to mobile); there is no one scripting language that people can rely on, like there is...