how to submit multi-line long form text to gemini?

Hey folks,

I've literally been in a whirlwind of joy for a couple of days now after
stumbling on a Gemini link on the Monome Norns forum. I love the
minimalism, I love the simplicity, and it started me thinking about what I
could do with Gemini.

I've been looking at ideas for community projects but the thing about that
is I need a means for non-technical users to be able to contribute.

Am I correct in saying that as it stands there is no built-in way for users
to submit content via a multi-line free text field and that it completely
relies on secondary means to get content onto the system running the Gemini
server?

I've seen some suggestions on the mailing list that include using a http
frontend to submit content, emailing in content, etc. All of which are
valid use cases. To me, that's just adding complexity which is what I'm
trying to get away from with Gemini.

I had a very brief look at titan and inimeg but I don't think either of
those is capable of allowing users to type longform text into a multi-line
free text box.

Has anyone else tried this or found a good way of achieving this?

The thought occurred to me that using INPUT I could implement an edlin
style text editor but I thought I'd sound this out before committing to
that level of self-harm!

Will finish off by just complimenting you on the quality of the discussion
here. I've been reading through quite a bit of the mailing list archive and
it's striking how super nice everyone is. What an amazing community you
have!

Thanks.

davx

On 09.07.2021 14:05, David Messer wrote:
> Am I correct in saying that as it stands there is no built-in way
> for users to submit content via a multi-line free text field and
> that it completely relies on secondary means to get content onto
> the system running the Gemini server?

You can submit such kind of data via INPUT. Section 3.2.1 makes it
clear IMHO that you can submit line breaks and such
("reserved characters") if they are percent encoded. Lagrange
supports using shift+return for line breaks in the input field, and
I assume the line breaks are then duly percent encoded, although I
have not checked.

Of course that still leaves out how to edit stuff, and also the
maximum length of the whole URL. So in theory it is possible, but
not really practical.

On 2021-07-09 01:05PM, David Messer wrote:
> Am I correct in saying that as it stands there is no built-in way for
> users to submit content via a multi-line free text field and that it
> completely relies on secondary means to get content onto the system
> running the Gemini server?
While the input codes (1x) do allow for inputting newlines, they are
limited to <1024 characters, so not too practical for freeform text.

> I've seen some suggestions on the mailing list that include using a
> http frontend to submit content ... To me, that's just adding
> complexity which is what I'm trying to get away from with Gemini.
I've always agreed that setting up an HTTP server just for input defeats
the purpose of Gemini.

> I had a very brief look at titan and inimeg but I don't think either
> of those is capable of allowing users to type longform text into a
> multi-line free text box.
They are actually capable of anything.  Titan works almost exactly like
how HTTP input forms work, those are just wrapped up nicely in a GUI.
If you wrote a decent client for Titan then it would be
indistinguishable from an HTTP free text form.  It could work like the
in-browser Wikipedia editor and edit an existing page (which is what
it's currently used for), but it also allows you to just submit
arbitrary text and your server can make use of a Titan upload however it
wants (add the text to the end of a page as a comment, etc.).  It's just
a matter of there not being much good support or software for it right
now.

I have no experience with Inimeg other than seeing it pop up on this
list a few times, so I can't say anything about it.

> The thought occurred to me that using INPUT I could implement an edlin
> style text editor but I thought I'd sound this out before committing
> to that level of self-harm!
I believe someone got ed(1) working through Gemini, and it's... better
than nothing I guess.  The link is eluding me right now though.

~nytpu

-- 
Alex // nytpu
alex@nytpu.com
gpg --locate-external-key alex@nytpu.com
Key fingerprint: 43A5 890C EE85 EA1F 8C88 9492 ECCD C07B 337B 8F5B
https://useplaintext.email/

* Friday, 2021-07-09 at 09:30 -0600 - Alex // nytpu <alex@nytpu.com>:

>> The thought occurred to me that using INPUT I could implement an edlin 
style text editor but I thought I'd sound this out before committing to 
that level of self-harm!
> I believe someone got ed(1) working through Gemini, and it's... better
> than nothing I guess.  The link is eluding me right now though.

You may mean this:
gemini://gemini.thegonz.net/gemrepl/examples/ed/

There's also this post suggesting using SMTP-style multiline input, with 
an example implementation linked from it:
gemini://gemini.thegonz.net/glog/210508-multilineInput.gmi

On Fri, 9 Jul 2021 at 16:27, Alex // nytpu <alex@nytpu.com> wrote:

>
> While the input codes (1x) do allow for inputting newlines, they are
> limited to <1024 characters, so not too practical for freeform text.
>

That's what I was afraid of with input codes.

I was thinking with my heart and getting carried away with the ideas for
things I could build and trying to find any way I could to make it work.

I've always agreed that setting up an HTTP server just for input defeats
> the purpose of Gemini.
>

As I say, my use case is community building, and for the ideas I was
thinking of, I just can't do that right now with Gemini. And that's ok.

They are actually capable of anything.  Titan works almost exactly like
> how HTTP input forms work, those are just wrapped up nicely in a GUI.
> If you wrote a decent client for Titan then it would be
> indistinguishable from an HTTP free text form.  It could work like the
> in-browser Wikipedia editor and edit an existing page (which is what
> it's currently used for), but it also allows you to just submit
> arbitrary text and your server can make use of a Titan upload however it
> wants (add the text to the end of a page as a comment, etc.).  It's just
> a matter of there not being much good support or software for it right
> now.
>

That's pretty interesting though like you say, it's down to client support,
and if that's a bit hit and miss right now I should probably take a wait
and see approach.

Thanks for your reply, Alex, was very helpful.

davx

On Fri, 9 Jul 2021 at 16:27, Alex // nytpu <alex@nytpu.com> wrote:
>
> > I had a very brief look at titan and inimeg but I don't think either
> > of those is capable of allowing users to type longform text into a
> > multi-line free text box.
>
> They are actually capable of anything.  Titan works almost exactly like
> how HTTP input forms work, those are just wrapped up nicely in a GUI.
> If you wrote a decent client for Titan then it would be
> indistinguishable from an HTTP free text form.  It could work like the
> in-browser Wikipedia editor and edit an existing page (which is what
> it's currently used for), but it also allows you to just submit
> arbitrary text and your server can make use of a Titan upload however it
> wants (add the text to the end of a page as a comment, etc.).  It's just
> a matter of there not being much good support or software for it right
> now.
>

I've seen this titan protocol mentioned a few times on the list, but I
can't seem to find any info on it.
Have you got a link to somewhere with info on it?
Thanks in advance.

-Oliver Simmons (GoodClover)

Here you go.
gemini://transjovian.org/titan

On Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 08:20 Oliver Simmons <oliversimmo@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Jul 2021 at 16:27, Alex // nytpu <alex@nytpu.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I had a very brief look at titan and inimeg but I don't think either
> > > of those is capable of allowing users to type longform text into a
> > > multi-line free text box.
> >
> > They are actually capable of anything.  Titan works almost exactly like
> > how HTTP input forms work, those are just wrapped up nicely in a GUI.
> > If you wrote a decent client for Titan then it would be
> > indistinguishable from an HTTP free text form.  It could work like the
> > in-browser Wikipedia editor and edit an existing page (which is what
> > it's currently used for), but it also allows you to just submit
> > arbitrary text and your server can make use of a Titan upload however it
> > wants (add the text to the end of a page as a comment, etc.).  It's just
> > a matter of there not being much good support or software for it right
> > now.
> >
>
> I've seen this titan protocol mentioned a few times on the list, but I
> can't seem to find any info on it.
> Have you got a link to somewhere with info on it?
> Thanks in advance.
>
> -Oliver Simmons (GoodClover)
>

(Sorry I'm late in responding to this.)

I also care quite a bit about supporting non-technical users - especially
in helping them manage their own content.

I've shared some thoughts in-line below.

On Fri, Jul 9, 2021 at 6:05 AM David Messer <davx8342@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> I've literally been in a whirlwind of joy for a couple of days now after
> stumbling on a Gemini link on the Monome Norns forum. I love the
> minimalism, I love the simplicity, and it started me thinking about what I
> could do with Gemini.
>
> I've been looking at ideas for community projects but the thing about that
> is I need a means for non-technical users to be able to contribute.
>

For me, I wanted a single download/install - a single client that could
read *and* write. I kept my client super simple though... both to ease
implementation and to try to keep with the ethos of Gemini.


> Am I correct in saying that as it stands there is no built-in way for
> users to submit content via a multi-line free text field and that it
> completely relies on secondary means to get content onto the system running
> the Gemini server?
>

There is no officially supported status code to request anything other than
a single line of input shorter than 1024 characters.

The client I wrote added a status code that allowed for the server to
supply the entire page to the client and set up accepting an entire page as
part of a request sent from a client. I've sent several emails in this
group that talk through the details of an implementation. My server
conforms to the implementation and the client I wrote also supports it. Of
course you're welcome to write your own client that conformed to the
details of my experiment - it could be interesting to see if that worked.


> I've seen some suggestions on the mailing list that include using a http
> frontend to submit content, emailing in content, etc. All of which are
> valid use cases. To me, that's just adding complexity which is what I'm
> trying to get away from with Gemini.
>

Yeah - completely defeats the purpose IMO.


> I had a very brief look at titan and inimeg but I don't think either of
> those is capable of allowing users to type longform text into a multi-line
> free text box.
>
> Has anyone else tried this or found a good way of achieving this?
>

Feel free to check out the client I wrote: https://ondollo.com/mansfield


> The thought occurred to me that using INPUT I could implement an edlin
> style text editor but I thought I'd sound this out before committing to
> that level of self-harm!
>

Interesting idea - feel free to do what you might want to have done or what
you might enjoy doing... but it seems like you wouldn't enjoy that! ;-)


> Will finish off by just complimenting you on the quality of the discussion
> here. I've been reading through quite a bit of the mailing list archive and
> it's striking how super nice everyone is. What an amazing community you
> have!
>
> Thanks.
>
> davx
>

Welcome to the group!