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> Isn't that TCP's job? Is this person saying Gemini doesn't use TCP?

maybe he’s talking about higher level features, like the possibility to restart a download from a certain point, without redownloading the initial part? haven’t used this since dialup days, though

Quote from project FAQ:

> Gemini has no support for caching, compression, or resumption of interrupted downloads. As such, it's not very well suited to distributing large files, for values of "large" which depend upon the speed and reliability of your network connection.

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.html

Download managers that speed up downloads use this feature. I.e. they use 2 threads, 1 download from the beginning and the other continueing from the middle of the file. This fools single connection throttling measures.

I suspect that it is this partial download that they are talking about.

That said, I can't tell whether or not I've used it recently. I know I don't use it when I play with personal projects, but I don't know what other sites do because I rarely have a console pulled up in my browser when I'm just using it, rather than developing.

Its often used with bulk file downloads (e.g. curl a multi-gb file while transfering between wifi networks), as well as video streaming sometimes (buffering)

> How is a network protocol proof against being used to transport CSS files? Does the network stack inspect what you're shipping and ensure you're only sending 100% Pure Plain Text?

The Gemini specification includes its own format for pages, which is a text-based scheme inspired by Markdown and Gopher menus. You can use the Gemini protocol to transmit things other than Gemini pages, sort of like how you can use HTTP to transmit PDFs and Word documents, but you wouldn't build your whole site out of them. (At least that's my impression, I haven't gotten around to actually visiting many Gemini sites yet.)

> How is a network protocol proof against being used to transport CSS files? Does the network stack inspect what you're shipping and ensure you're only sending 100% Pure Plain Text?

It's just like the web, the transport protocol (HTTP/S) can be used on any file. But there is a separate spec for the document format (HTML etc.). You could transport CSS over Gemini, just don't expect any of the browsers to render it. Just like how web browsers won't execute alternate scripting languages natively.

> Isn't that TCP's job? Is this person saying Gemini doesn't use TCP?

I didn't really elaborate on this point while writing, because I had nothing to add. I will quote from the projects FAQ:

>> Gemini has no support for caching, compression, or resumption of interrupted downloads. As such, it's not very well suited to distributing large files, for values of "large" which depend upon the speed and reliability of your network connection.

Hopefully that clears up what I meant.

> Back in the Gopher days, my "Gemini browser" would be my Web browser.

You might be interested in Castor[1]. It's a browser for the minimalist internet. Rolls support for Gemini, Gopher and Finger all in one.

I can understand why FF removed support. But hopefully smaller applications, like Castor, can fill this gap.

[1]: https://sr.ht/~julienxx/Castor/

>>Gemini has no support for caching, compression, or resumption of interrupted downloads. As such, it's not very well suited to distributing large files, for values of "large" which depend upon the speed and reliability of your network connection.

Which honestly is pretty silly, as lots of caching is about reducing latency for small files not saving bandwidth for large files. Suppose it matters less if the documents are self contained.

> You could transport CSS over Gemini, just don't expect any of the browsers to render it.

If Gemini is ever of even domain-specific serious use, I'd expect both the format and protocol to be added to what is supported by existing major web browsers (it can't be both tractable for small implementers and intractable for Apple/Google/Mozilla), which, as it turns out, know how to support the combination of HTML/CSS/JS just fine and won't likely forget just because a different transfer protocol is involved. Presenting a DOM mapping for Gemini format pages and exposing it at least to extensions even if there is no way to include page scripts doesn't seem unlikely, either.