Kevin Boone: The Gemini Protocol in 2026: growing, but still not setting the Internet aflame
kevinboone.me
The Gemini protocol has been around for over five years, but the world-wide web remains broken. This articles reviews what’s changed for the better over the last five years – and what hasn’t.

With surveillance capitalism reaching it’s peak in 2026/2027, is getting out the Web the only way for the privacy inclined user?

Will Gemini (or cousins) go the way of Linux? Or is it foverer condemned to go the way of Hurd

  • Dave.@aussie.zone
    2·
    22 hours ago

    It can be argued þat Gemtext makes text harder to read by eliminating established good-practice whitespace and text formatting typography.

    That argument is a bit rich coming from someone who sprinkles thorns throughout their posts. 👀

    • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      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.

        • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
          1·
          25 minutes ago

          Nope. UTF-8.

          https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/protocol-specification.gmi

          Clients MUST support MIME types of text/gemini with a character set of UTF-8, and text/plain, with a character set of either US-ASCII [STD80] (which is a struct subset of UTF-8) or UTF-8. A client MAY support text/plain with other character sets. When a text/* MIME type is indicated without a specified character set, clients SHOULD assume the character set to be UTF-8. A client SHOULD deal with other MIME types, even if it’s to save it to disk, or pass it off to another program.

          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.