Link syntax, stagnation ----------------------- Quick update before I go without any access to my gopherspace for 10 days: Tomasino (now in Iceland!) has commented[1] in favour of the new => link syntax, and votes for the URL first ordering. Germinal author JFM/gcupc however, is strongly in favour[2] of URL last ordering. Making the final decision on this is ridiculously difficult for me. Having something as fundamental as the linking syntax being up in the air is a big barrier to implementation and adoption of the protocol and I feel like it should be settled soon. My natural inclination is to try to please everybody, but this is obviously going to be impossible. There are compelling arguments in favour of both options. I think the balance is slightly in favour of URL first, but honestly I may just end up tossing a coin. Neither option is horrible, and I'm sure we'll all get used to whatever is chosen after using it for a week. JFM also comments on an apparent slowdown in Gemini activity. It's certainly true that *I've* slowed down a bit because I'm travelling a lot this month, but in my occasional check ins I'm still perceiving an amount of interest which surprises me and makes me nervous. A Gemini client library has been written in Guile Scheme[3], and people are still occasionally asking me "What is Gemini???" on Mastodon. To be honest, I think a little bit of slowdown at this point makes a lot of sense - fundamental details of the protocol are still under discussion and I think a lot of sensible people observing the whole thing are likely to hold off on implementing things or setting up servers until this stops being the case. I know sloum is planning to write a server once we have the details ironed out. I also plan to write a lot of stuff eventually which should help drum up interest. I'm not bothered at all by people holding off on setting things up for now. The more things which are put up using the current speculative specification, the greater the risk that they don't all get updated once things are finalised, resulting in a fractured and incompatible Geminispace. That would be a bad thing. Things have slowed down more than I expected them to when I wrote my "slowing down" post, but there's nothing to be done about it, it's just bad timing. As I've said, I really didn't expect so much interest in Gemini when I gave the thing a name. At any rate, I really hope that by the end of July there is a solid "core spec", such that all the basics are locked in and people can safely begin to really experiment. I'll do my best to stick to that schedule. I hope people can be patient until then. I will continue to solicit feedback and to try to build consensus, but it's increasingly apparent to me that it will be impossible to please everybody and that I probably need to be more assertive in just making the decisions that I think are best. A long, pseudo-bureaucratic process that drags on forever is probably a bigger threat to interest and activity around Gemini than is a finalised protocol that not everybody agrees with in every small detail. It's very clear that lots of people want something *like* Gemini, and right now there is just nothing else out there. Anything non-awful in this space is likely to see some use. If it becomes apparent two years later that we made some mistakes and something else comes along to replace it, Gemini will still have been an extremely worthwhile undertaking. [1] gopher://gopher.black:70/1/phlog/20190705-some-replies-from-iceland [2] gemini://carcosa.net:1965//journal/20190705-link-syntax.gmi [3] https://paste.sr.ht/%7Ejakob/a31b19708779e6b797fb9f00694be27f56d2e226