I tried a hypertext system called Gemini
Gemini is the successor to Gopher, that thing we sometimes used before HTTP. This seems to be the entire motivation but also some of its users don't like that comparison, I guess.
I heard of Gemini because I saw a post from a Blind person who was excited about it, because of how there is not a single thing about Gemini that requires sight. Everything is just text and links and they work exactly the same on a screen or in a screen reader. This is good.
For my part, I immediately understood the yearning for a simpler time in hypertext. I used to know how to make a website. Now nobody knows how to make a website. The Web is riddled with inaccessibility and ads and tracking and overly complex technologies that make nobody happy.
I remember browsing a couple of Gopher sites in middle school. I think Netscape Navigator could just go to them. It was neat. I can see why this idea could be due for a resurgence.
Okay here's the first problem with Gemini: the name. There are several things called Gemini and most of them suck, and you have to search really hard if you want to find out about the hypertext protocol. I searched for a Gemini browser for Linux and it only pulled up unrelated cryptocurrency crap brought to you by the Winklevoss twins. And Google won't tell you about Gemini, the hypertext protocol, because they're so excited about their Gemini, the plagiarism machine.
I can understand a "why should I have to change, they're the one who sucks" reaction among the developers, but this is really not helping.
Protocol separatism
Gemini has made the bold choice to not be accessible at all over HTTP. I don't think this is going to drive adoption the way they might think it does, and they are scoring some own goals in the process.
I went to geminiprotocol.net, a commonly-accepted home page of Gemini that also serves an HTTP + HTML web site, and looked for Lagrange, a client that I hear is good. You have to scroll past like 100 clients that people wrote in a toy programming language, and then when you click on the link to Lagrange, it says:
Ready to take the plunge?
You've followed a link to another Gemini server! The gemini.circumlunar.space server mirrors its own Gemini content to the web to make it easier for people to learn about the new protocol, and you've been using that service so far. But if you want to explore the rest of Geminispace, you'll have to use a proper Gemini client that speaks the protocol natively! Don't worry, there are lots of clients to choose from for all major platforms, including Android and iOS.
I was trying to get a proper Gemini client. That is how I got to this page.
Also, the text refers to "gemini.circumlunar.space", a server that is not the one I am on, which also no longer serves a valid site over HTTP, and if you go there on Gemini it says to go to geminiprotocol.net.
If Gemini had a default feature to also serve HTTP+HTML web pages, then all this content would be accessible to people who don't "take the plunge". It would accomplish all the goals of publishing simple, accessible hypertext. It just wouldn't accomplish the goal of asking people to stop using HTTP, which I don't get why it's a goal.
It's a simple standard that's good enough that it won't need to be extended!
This is one of the big false promises of Gemini. They promise that the standard is so simple that all Gemini clients are equivalent and you won't ever see a notice like "Best Viewed With Geminavigator 4.2".
This has already gone wrong when you visit the Gemini Quickstart site, which has a presence on Gemini (gemini://geminiquickst.art) but is also served as an HTTP Web site.
It has inline thumbnails. That is not a designed feature of Gemini.
Gemini says that if you want the user to see an image, you can link them to it like you'd link to anything else. I went there in the Lagrange Gemini browser, and the part with the thumbnails is a garble of punctuation that looks like [‡ A screenshot of GemiNaut on Windows 10] >>. It's not a link. It just says that. The image link appears lower down among several other links, and is named ">>".
The site that's trying to encourage adoption of Gemini already extended and broke it.
What about screen reader accessibility?
Maybe it would all be worth it if the protocol lived up to its accessibility promises, where it's all just text and links and you can screen-read it.
But every big Gemini site I see has a logo, which they make out of ASCII art in a pre-formatted block that's the first thing on the page. I'm pretty sure anyone using a screen reader would give up immediately.
Did I find anything worth browsing on Gemini?
Not really. There are some unremarkable blogs ("glogs").
I browsed around medusae.space, which seems like it aims to be the 90s Yahoo of Gemini, and started looking for recipes, because recipes are the things that HTML has ruined the most. The first four recipe sites I clicked on were down. Eventually I got to a site that works, which was a glog that also has a single recipe, for paneer, which I will not be able to make.