2018-03-15
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After yesterdays post[0] I have received feedback[1] on mastodon
pointing to some effort to develop a new kind of hypertext / image /
layout language. This effort runs under the tag #gopherine[2] and
looks like a new client based on the ideas of gopher. I have not seen
anything else than the screenshots posted there and I have got mixed
feelings about this. From the (lack of) description I cannot tell,
what the advantages over using any other markup langugage are. After
all one can serve HTML documents over gopher just fine.  Or one can
resort to reST or markdown or anything else. The latter two also
allow one to add pictures to text and with meta info one could also
hint at the desired fonts a client should use, while degrading
gracefully and being still readable in their text-only form.

So if you come up with another markup, maybe checking whether it is
still readable without a fancy renderer is a good litmus test whether
you are adding value or just ballooning old features into a new
shape.

Still with all that said I think it's good and nice to see
alternative experiments with formats and forms. It is still better
than just complaining and may reveal some core features that are
valuable and need to be preserved.

___References________________________________________________________

[0]: gopher://vernunftzentrum.de:70/0/ckeen/phlog/2018-03-14-What-about-a-simple-degrading-web.md
[1]: https://a.weirder.earth/@bb010g/99684275372391629
[2]: https://a.weirder.earth/tags/gopherine