Standards

Yesterday, I was alone in the house most of the day, but didn't accomplish so much with my time. At the computer, I learned a little about alternative protocols to http, meaning gopher and the various attempts to update it, either by creating a better structure, beautification or increased security (I suppose those are the main categories?). Gemini was the most popular of these. It reminds me of other attempts to revive or create a standard - such as in language we have the 20th century revival of Hebrew and the creation of Esperanto - but then there have been other new languages that attempted to improve on Esperanto.

Languages have a life of their own and grow organically, democratically. People have to choose to use them, and then they decide to use them in a certain way. Sometimes a conqueror arrives and, through force or persuasion, gets the indigenous people to use the invaders' tongue. But, even then, the adopted language cannot remain uninfluenced by the previously prevailing language, so the invaders' language becomes bastardized, so we end up with English, French and Hindi.

It is the same with web standards. These exist, but, in the implementation, dominant companies, advertisers, designers and others cannot but have an influence on what results. Should we accept this or keep trying to constrain the protocols or the structure, into the mold we wouild like?

I think the answer is not to return to or create artificially restrictive protocols, but to allow each person to do as they wish. Some will want glitter and pizazz. Others will prefer greater austerity. Visitors will choose where to go, and, if they like, curb the excesses through pop-up blockers, anti-tracking mechanisms, alternative browsers or plugins that eliminate javascript, change the fonts or page colours, etc.

The solution is not to restrict the standards themselves, but to choose the manner of implementation, and not to accept anyone's absolute dictates. I have been inspired by the simplicity of Gemini and the Smolweb, and so, voluntarily try to adopt some of their standards to create this blog and my pages.

Some links:

Smol Net
Active gopher servers
Gemini protocol
Kristall - a browser for the small net

There are some tools for WebDav called Dav-Utils, which includes Dav-sync. This is supposed to automate the process of keeping a WebDav directory in sync with a local directory. If this works, it could make WebDav a lot more useful and make it possible to make WebDav work more like NextCloud and other cloud servers. It can use encryption too. Usually, if there is FTP or SSH access, one might prefer to simply use rsync. But I currently rely upon Fastmail's storage for creating this blog, and the company has restricted uploads to either Fastmail's native file server interface or WebDav. So I might utilize Dav-sync to keep my blog, wiki and photos in sync with the server.

Dav Utils

Though it's commercial, this site has a good listing, and good ideas, for cheap solutions for web hosting.

Low End Box

I posted a link in Hubzilla to an article telling how a Gnome developer proposes to do away with the middle-button paste option that exists under Linux. To my surprise, I discovered that several people among my contacts were completely unaware of this option.

Article on The Register

On my morning walk, listened on podverse.fm to two amazing episodes of the Empire podcast series - this time on photographers.

Mary Seely Harris with her early Kodak Brownie, risked her life to expose the atrocities taking place under King Leopold II in Congo. (The outcry was so huge, he was obliged to surrender his personal control over the colony.)

Yousuf Karsh as a child survived the Armenian genocide, then went on to become one of the 20th century's best known portraitists, taking iconic photos of Winston Churchill, FDR, Salvador Dali, Einstein, Hemingway and many others.

https://podverse.fm/episode/MMlkSbLgM
https://podverse.fm/episode/xo5bGDwgB