i love the spaces that gemini created, but agree that (from a protocol and technical standpoint) gemini and gemtext were more "frustratingly inferior" rather than "elegantly simplified".
This is my favorite take—constraints can breed innovation, but usually only when the constrained system doesn’t already have a complete substitute that isn’t constrained.
I’d love to see a system that went hard on elegance. If we’re tilting at windmills, the alternative to web I’d like to see, is the fully Scheme web: S-exprs for content, DSSSL for styling, and Scheme for logic.
It was the web we’d have had in a different timeline.
At that point, you have a digital fax machine that prints out a message when you you dial it.
Which beckons the question: does anyone know of or remember an automated system like this, where you rang a number and it would ring your fax machine back with a document? I like to imagine I could have made my millions on 'dial-a-newspaper' back in the 90s!
> [D]oes anyone know of or remember an automated system like this, where you rang a number and it would ring your fax machine back with a document? I like to imagine I could have made my millions on 'dial-a-newspaper' back in the 90s!
There were many, though they were not seemingly used for newspapers. Generally, you subscribed to a newsletter, or were subscribed against your will to a mostly-ads-but-pretending-to-be-a-newsletter. These would arrive on your fax machine, usually on a schedule. Or you dialed another fax machine that would respond with some infopage, specs sheet, or government document (and sometimes let you choose from a published menu by entering other codes after connecting).
I was only ever on the receiving end, so don't remember the names of any of these systems. I believe the dial-a-menu faxes mainly existed on high-end machines owned by large corporations.
I’d love to see a system that went hard on elegance. If we’re tilting at windmills, the alternative to web I’d like to see, is the fully Scheme web: S-exprs for content, DSSSL for styling, and Scheme for logic.
It was the web we’d have had in a different timeline.