Re: Reviving the terminal internet — lo oking for collaborators

Hi Mayank,

>Long-time user of Lynx (and w3m) here, and a bit of a fan of what this
>project has always stood for: a web that's fast, keyboard-driven, and
>readable in the dark on a 1998 ThinkPad.
>
>Lately I've been thinking that "surfing" the internet is gone =E2=80=94 yo=
u don't
>browse anymore, you get pushed. The terminal is the one place left that's
>calm, focused, and weirdly beautiful. So I want to build a modern
>terminal-based internet service in the spirit of Lynx, but remixed for
>today:

that is well-reasoned! You=E2=80=99ll find many people with similar opinion=
s
on the Fediverse.

>1. What do you see as the biggest pain points / missing pieces in text-mod=
e
>browsing today?

tbh just websites using JavaScript, as always, and crap sites with
=E2=80=9Ccaptchas=E2=80=9D, especially Cloudflare. Server-side, scraping an=
d attacks.

I=E2=80=99m happy with the current thing and don=E2=80=99t want for anythin=
g new.
In fact, anything new would just splinter the community, which is
small enough already, and (as DeVault=E2=80=99s =E2=80=9CGemini=E2=80=9D ha=
s shown) often
so full of crap and short-sighted ideas.

I wouldn=E2=80=99t want to use anything new. lynx compiles well even on
very old tech, and it uses common standards like proper HTML (not
HTML5 where everyone invents their own) and HTTP 1.0/1.1, which
is well-supported in a multitude of servers and clients, and which
allows lynx users to connect with, say, people running a Macintosh
under System 7, using a webserver that runs on a C64 (this is not
a joke, I know of at least one such instance).

So I=E2=80=99d rather ask more people to make websites in a tasteful amount
of HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.1 in HTML compatibility mode (put spaces
before the =E2=80=9C/>=E2=80=9D and serve as MIME text/html), in UTF-8 (tha=
t=E2=80=99s the
=E2=80=9Cmodern=E2=80=9D part) and making them available on not only https =
but also
http (and, possibly, the https part also with TLSv1 not requiring
the latest crypto which is a security level few need).

Indeed much of the success of the web, of eMail, of IRC, of Usenet,
of the Fediverse, etc. stems from there being a *multitude* of
implementations, for various platforms, use cases and tastes.

If you were to do a new thing, you=E2=80=99d have one, maybe two, impls
and =E2=80=9Csecond-class citizen=E2=80=9D status in maybe a few others whe=
re
support for the new thing is bolted on top. It would work for a
while but be painful, and, eventually, adoption will go down again.

(lynx is also accessibility: there are people here using it on DOS,
or with Braille lines, not just visual terminals or text-to-speech.)

Good luck,
//mirabilos

PS: don=E2=80=99t mail me directly, you=E2=80=99re using Googlemail which i=
s
    prohibitive for collaborating on FOSS as they reject mails
    from/to private, individual mail servers as they like
--=20
  "Using Lynx is like wearing a really good pair of shades: cuts out
   the glare and harmful UV (ultra-vanity), and you feel so-o-o COOL."
                                         -- Henry Nelson, March 1999