Last Modified: Sun Mar 26 12:14:28 AM WET 2023

A quick introduction to "gemtext" markup

Once you've read this document, you might like to occasionally refresh your memory by referring to the:

Text

Links

Link lines look like this:

=> https://example.com    A cool website
=> gopher://example.com   An even cooler gopherhole
=> gemini://example.com   A supremely cool Gemini capsule
=> sftp://example.com

A cool website

An even cooler gopherhole

A supremely cool Gemini capsule

That is:

They start with the two characters =>,
followed by optional whitespace (spaces or tabs, as many or as few as you like),
followed by a URL (any protocol you like).
They can end right there if you like, as per the sftp example above!
Or they can be followed by at least one space or tab,
And then a human-friendly label, which can be as long as you like

Lists

Gemtext supports unordered lists. Each item in a list is written as a single long line, which begins with a single * symbol followed by one mandatory space character:

* Mercury
* Gemini
* Apollo

Mercury
Gemini
Apollo

Blockquotes

Gemtext supports blockquotes. The quoted content is written as a single long line, which begins with a single > character:

> Gemtext supports blockquotes.  The quoted content is written as a single long line, which begins with a single > character

Gemtext supports blockquotes. The quoted content is written as a single long line, which begins with a single > character

Preformatted text

Anything which comes after the ``` characters of a line which toggles preformatted line *on* (i.e. the first, third, fifth, etc. toggling lines in a document) may be treated as "alt text" for the preformatted content.  In general you should not count on this content being visible to the user but, for example, search engines may index it and screen readers may read it to users to help the user decide whether the preformatted content should be read aloud (which e.g. ASCII art generally should not be, but which source code perhaps should be).  There are currently no established conventions on how alt text should be formatted.

Anything which comes after the ``` characters of a line which toggles preformatted line *on* (i.e. the first, third, fifth, etc. toggling lines in a document) may be treated as "alt text" for the preformatted content. In general you should not count on this content being visible to the user but, for example, search engines may index it and screen readers may read it to users to help the user decide whether the preformatted content should be read aloud (which e.g. ASCII art generally should not be, but which source code perhaps should be). There are currently no established conventions on how alt text should be formatted.

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