How-To

A series born from a love of simplicity.

Tip: Some GUI clients allow to toggle the source view of a page, like Lagrange with CMD-Y or CTRL-Y.

Intro

I gathered some insights while trying to create my own capsule:

Again, it looks like, after careful consideration of all options, it seems best to choose the simplest alternative.

As you can see from the current layout of my capsule, I chose a style without any distractions, meaning no meta-navigation links on pages. Gemini clients allow for easier navigation of hierarchies by using “up” or “home” shortcuts, which should be enough.

For the gemlog index I chose the same style I have for my minimalist web site: one with titles-only and summary below. This way readers can decide if the post might be of interest, which shorter and cuter titles in general can not communicate. And very long titles don’t look good on smaller screens.

I also don’t use any extraneous characters on my pages, not even line separators, because Gemtext has a strong text focus and should be styled by readers configuring their clients, and not by creators who created the content. If you want to add a strong visual identity to your capsule, the web with strong CSS support is certainly the better place for that. And the obligatory reminder to think about people with screen readers applies.

I’ve kept my attempts to find the right style for my capsule for posterity. You and I can look at different styles if we feel we could try out a new style.

TL;DR

Lose the WWW behavior and choose the simplest text-only version, respect the heading hierarchy, create your gemlog index in Gemsub style, and don’t use optical embellishments like lines or even ASCII art.

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