If Gemini had picked markdown instead of gemtext I would've jumped in with both feet.

I get it though -- they're trying to resurrect gopher, which is what gemtext is a modernification of.

Still, I think markdown is our best shot at recovering the real web.

And yes, I know there's a standardization problem. Just pick a standard and run with it. Difficulty picking one is not a reason to pick none. And in case it wasn't obvious I'm talking about markdown without embedded html here.

Why though? We could have the browser apply the styles. And even allow user preferences to affect the presentation! kinda like firefox "article mode".

But that text/markdown would have to be restricted not to include any html tags, which are allowed in the "common" md spec.