A user friendly client to browse Gemini (and Gopher) from Windows.
Gemini is a radically simple protocol and text format for browsing on the Internet. For more information see https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
GemiNaut has led the way with a number of user interface innovations, some of which are being adopted by other Gemini clients, including:
- User selectable themes
- Site-specific theming
- Page level table of contents
- Visual distinguishing of link protocols by style
- Visual distinguishing of linked file type (e.g. images, documents, music)
- Active footnotes for viewing web content as text/gemini
You can download a pre-built application for Windows from the GemiNaut home page
- Familiar navigation actions, smooth scrolling and text wrap
- Keyboard shortcuts, wheelmouse zoom
- Fast navigation through history, including remembering scroll offset
- Support bullet, heading and quote line styles
- View linked images or download linked files
- Flexible theming engine
- Site based themes
- Visually distinguish internal (gopher, gemini) vs external links (http, https etc)
- Table of contents (Fabric and Dark themes)
- Icon hints to common non textual content (images, audio, video, docs)
- Support both Gemini and Gopher protocol
- Autolinking of urls in Gopher text pages
- View source
- Option to view a simplified rendering of linked web pages
- Client certificates
- Accessible to screen readers
GPL 3
The GemiNaut solution references and uses the [SmolNetSharp] and SelfCertSharp client library projects, which need to be checked out into a sibiling folder, e.g.
projects\GemiNaut
projects\SmolNetSharp
projects\SelfCertSharp
Fabric theme (site specific themes):
Dark theme:
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build against .NET 6.0
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allow install on Windows 11
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use updated html2gmi for better web rendering
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minor tweaks to themes so font for web links are more readable due to increased contrast in fabric themes
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remove legacy "Unified" theme
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better support for TLS 1.3
- fewer runtime dependencies for .NET
- fix typo in default bookmark list
- new feature: generate and use client certificates
- accessibility feature: hidden links to skip over preformatted text areas for screen readers
- save user settings in persistent folder in profile
- fix: require certificates for proxy servers
- update jdenticon and toast notification libraries
- use SelfCertSharp client certificate library
- report expired server certificates
- new internal C# network library (SmolNetSharp) to retrieve Gemini and Gopher resources
- fewer false positives from anti-virus utilities falsely marking GemiNaut and its assets as malware
- use dark scrollbar on dark theme preformatted text areas
- remove dependency on gopher-get and gemget command line utilities
- trim long headings in TOC
- fix bug to allow quotes and angle brackets in labels of preformatted text areas
- better logic detection of redirects combined with input
Sailing the small web
- application binaries and installer are now signed
- can access the small web (document web) using native converter html->gmi
- default is to try to check certificate validity on all servers, if validation not successful, warn with toast message and connect anyway
- can render text/html files served in gemini (simplified)
- scrollbars on preformatted text areas only appear when region is hovered to reduce clutter
- can access the small web using an HTTP proxy for Gemini (e.g. https://github.com/LukeEmmet/duckling-proxy)
- can access the small web using native converter
- live footnote style links for native converter or if HTTP proxy uses numbered citations (e.g. "[1]")
- integrate Goose to allow for a "simplified" view of web content
- allow switching modes between different rendering options for web content
- update to use latest gemget 1.5
- fix bug to allow downloading from paths having no file extension
- fix bug to correctly render mailto: links
- create application installer
- slighly more whitespace (increased line spacing) in themes to improve readability
0.8.7
- only show tooltip on preformatted text if non-empty
- drop use of proxy for gopher and allow file downloading
- display images directly from gopher
- use maintained gopher client gopher-get published to https://github.com/LukeEmmet/gopher-get
- resource download possible from cgi script as well as static files
- improve link wrap in gopher using monospace fonts in fabric themes
- file->new to start a new GemiNaut instance with the current URL to fork the browsing session
- can start with a URL commandline parameter
- use same identity in classic fabric theme for /~foo as users/foo
- navigated or redirected URIs are now normalised (e.g. remove port if it is the default for the scheme)
- binary files can now be downloaded to chosen location, not open in proxy (gemini)
- can specify download max size/time before abandoning
- new settings window for download options and home url
- when upgrading from previous version, keep previous settings
- hanging indents for bullets and links in terminal theme
- keyboard shortcuts for bookmarks (e.g. Alt+B) and other menus
- build links correctly when a port is given within the URL
- server size and timeout for slow or too large content
- simple image display within GemiNaut
- updated build of gemget
GemiNaut 💓 Gopher
- GemiNaut is now a gopher client as well as gemini
- preformatted areas now have their own scroll bar and don't overflow the side of the content
- update Fabric theme so it uses internally generated fabric and identicon (previous Fabric theme still available as "classic")
- automatic linking of plain urls in gopher text files
- automatic generation of page titles for gopher pages based on url
- update to use latest gemget 1.3.0
- theming engine will use same theme for the same user on gemini and gopher
- gopher text is monospaced but will softwrap for longer lines > 85 chars
- only display text/gemini as gemini content, otherwise use plain text preformatted rendering
- make bookmarks window wider
- show tooltips or urls for bookmark entries
- better feedback messages if content cannot be displayed
- check url entered into address bar is valid syntax before trying to navigate to it
- support spacers in bookmarks list with lines of hyphens or underscores longer than two characters
- minor improvements to themes
- use a smaller border around placemarker icon when there is no TOC
- new dark theme, with variable width font, colours are based on dark themes of source code editors
- bookmarks - source format is just text/gemini
- better vertical spacing - e.g. headings always have space between them and surrounding paragraphs
- user definable themes - create your own and drop it in the GmiConverters/themes folder
- help files now use text/gemini format and have their own table of contents
- minor style improvements for plain theme
- use correct percent encoding for URL requests with input
- links with encoded query expression now passed on to server correctly
- support quotation line style (new addition to Gemini spec)
- show an icon on links to probable images (png, jpg etc) as a visual hint
- asterisks must be followed by space to become a bullet (Gemini spec update)
- remove debug white border around navigation in Fabric theme
- minor style updates
- bug fix: don't remove commas and separators from text lines
- add automatic page level table of contents for Fabric theme
- fix keyboard focus problem so you dont have to click into browser on each page
- display view->source GMI as utf-8
First public release
- added simple userguide
- infer the document title from the first heading or para text line and show in window caption
- darken the background a tiny bit in Fabric theme to be less saturated
- workaround for GemGet bug which overwrites into the output file, rather than replacing the whole file
- user selectable themes (4 to start with Fabric, Plain, Terminal and Unified UI)
- html escape source content before display
- pass torture tests relating to link formation
- detect response redirect urls and adjust links accordingly (e.g. gemini://domain/users/user -> gemini://domain/users/user/)
- pad output with blank lines at end for better display of short content
- new plain line blocks always preceded by at least one blank line
- prettify spacing of headings, always have a blank line before these.
- prettify spacing of links/bullets, always have a blank line unless previous element was one too (e.g. gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space:1965/users/acdw/ is laid out more pleasantly)
- when loading raw gmi for view source get browser to interpret as text/plain
- application icon from http://www.iconarchive.com/show/pretty-office-8-icons-by-custom-icon-design/Text-align-left-icon.html
- txtUrl follows page better
- local versions of Rebol and GmiConverters and Gemget folders used if found
- more pretty handling of page not found (status 51)
- txtUrl never shows https urls
- user can edit home page
- show prompt for query building
- decorate links to expected binary files with document glyph to hint content
- hanging indent on bullets and links
- visual hinting of non gemini links with glyph and link style
- show tooltip of url to be navigated to
- code fences for preformatted areas, including label as tooltip
- toast popups for error conditions
- session and server independent identikons and page background texture
- user based visual identity/theme for personal sub-sites, not requiring author control
- view source
- launch external urls in system browser
- use http proxy for common binary file types
- empty cache on close
- prettify links, headings and bullets
- go back and forward remembers scroll offset
- rich CSS styling and visual design
- smooth scrolling
- tab through page links
- cursor keys, page/up down, keyboard shortcuts for back/forwards
- zoom with wheelmouse
- navigate forwards, back, quickly (browser cache)
- wrap long lines to window
- Ctrl+F to find in current page
- Select all, copy to clipboard
- Ctrl+P to print page