One of the recurring questions when people familiar with HTML discover the Gemini protocol is: Why? Why not just write really simple HTML?

I came to see the appeal back in 2021, but taking a fresh look at Gopher this month, and actually building a basic Gopher site, helped me crystalize something:

It makes the most sense to look at Gemini and Gemtext in terms of the Gopher revival it came out of. It’s less “what do we want to throw out from the web?” and more “what bits of the web do we really miss when building with Gopher?”

So it ditches Gopher’s arcane menu syntax and strict menu/document hierarchy in favor of basic hypertext links that can be used anywhere. It adds word wrap, since we’re all using different-sized screens now, but makes it possible to keep ascii art/tables when needed. It welcomes global writing systems. Then it adds TLS for protection against eavesdropping.

The result is something that’s almost as minimalist as Gopher, but a lot more flexible. That makes it easier to get into than Gopher or hand-crafting your own website, plus it’s still usable on low-spec hardware or networks.

As a minimalist web, it seems lacking. As a web-enhanced response to Gopher, the goals are clearer.

See also: Project Gemini FAQ