On the proposed new link syntax

People are weighing in on the new proposed link syntax for gemini map files.

Everyone seems to like the use of => on a new line to mark a link. The points of

discussion are 1. whether whitespace after '=>' is mandatory, and what kind of

whitesppace is allowed, and 2. whether the text or the URL comes first.

On question 1, I think whitespace is mandatory, but the amount and type of it

doesn't matter. Any combination of spaces, tabs, non-breaking spaces, etc. This

is a job where using a regular expression does not actually give you two

problems.

On question 2, there seems to be an emergind consensus that the URL should come

first. The main argument in favor seems to be that it is slightly easier to

parse; Tomasino makes a secondary argument that it makes it easier to guarantee

that the URL is visible. I want to strongly disagree with this position: the

human-readable text needs to come first. This is because the text document is

mainly supposed to be useful to a human, and secondarily to the program. Humans

should not have to read past the link URL, which may be long and weird, in order

to see the part that is meaningful to them. This is also consistent with

lightweight markup languages like MarkDown and MediaWiki.

I'm seeing a bit of a slowdown in Gemini discussion lately. It may be that it's

just that Solderpunk is on vacation, or it may be that there's not really that

much to discuss. But I'm not seeing people standing up servers, or progress on

the clients that are out there, either. I hope this doesn't represent a decline

in interest in the project.