2019-06-25 - No one to relate to 'cept the sea
 ----------------------------------------------
 
 Solderpunk continues his  exploration of project gemini  [1]. I had
 reached out  to him on  the fediverse,  and he kindly  responded in
 full, so  when he did likewise,  I felt like  I just had to  do the
 same.
 
 First of all, and probably most importantly, I want to reach out to
 Sean [2] who  writes somewhat despairingly of  the "geminimap" link
 format I proposed.  He, well, he doesn't like it  [3], referring to
 it as an "abomination". I don't think it's quite that bad, but I do
 acknowledge that there are some issues.
 
 I made  my case here  that using <tab>  as a delimiter  has serious
 disadvantages. While it is true,  as Sean says, that every keyboard
 has  a  <tab> key,  the  fact  remains  that modern  computers  and
 programs interpret that key  differently. I think the disadvantages
 of it outweight the immediate advantage of having a dedicated key -
 particularly when we consider the initial ideas behind Gemini.
 
 I  think solderpunk  has given  more than  enough commentary  about
 escape-chars and  the rest, so I  won't go into it  here, except to
 say that no matter what delimiter  you come up with, there's always
 going  to be  some  plausible reason  to use  that  delimiter in  a
 file/uri. No matter what you do, you  may have to end up escaping a
 character!
 
 In a conversation  on the Fediverse [4], tomasino,  alex and others
 weigh  in on  solderpunks last  idea: Magic!  Well, at  least magic
 strings.
 
 I have  to say that I  love this idea,  in fact I'd be  far happier
 with it than my own idea. I fear that I was allowing my ideas to be
 constrained by limits imposed by gopher, and the implementations of
 that. Thinking inside the box, as it were.
 
 In terms of magic strings, of  the options proposed, the one I like
 best is:-
 
 =>
 
 This just reminds me of when I was a kid, playing with the terminal
 at home. Its like being brought  full circle back to those days. Of
 the others, I fear that the monkeyloop is just overused these days,
 and I don't think a shebang  should be used for anything other than
 its accepted usage.
 
 Finally, and  happily, I think the  idea of slowing down  is a good
 one. There's  no rush here, there's  no pressure, this is  all just
 fun, and it should remain that before anything else.
 
 [1]: gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/gemini/gemini-maps-3.txt
 [2]: gopher://conman.org
 [3]: gemini://gemini.conman.org
 [4]: https://glitch.social/users/gcupc/statuses/102326434899616117

 FN: Bonus prize to anyone who gets the reference in the header.