RFC: TinyLogs format

Status: Draft Last update: 2021-06-08

Introduction

A Tinylog is a simple file with all "microblog" style entries to share small contents and interact with other other geminauts' tinylog.

The original idea and most "rules" comes from Drew/uoou/Friendo:

=> gemini://friendo.monster/log/lace.gmi

The goal of this RFC is to standardize the tinylog format for better coherence between authors by providing a consistent approach. This will also allow better tools around tinylogs to improve both authors and readers experience reading micro entries.

Tinylog format

This tinylog format proposal is composed of a mandatory part that tinylogs must be compatible with and optional information that author could add as meta information about their tinylog.

Mandatory format

Each tinylog entry must be formated as follow:

## <Date> <Entry Title>
<Content>

It starts with a second level header (##), followed by a space and then followed by a space and then the title of the entry.

<Entry Title> format: Any text without new line.

<Date> format: 2 possible format for the date:

YYYY-MM-DD h:m[:s] TZ

example:

2006-01-02 15:04:05 MST

Seconds are optional.

or: Weekday DD Month YYYY h:m[:s] TZ Weekday should be in 3 letters format (eg: Mon for Monday). Month should be in 3 letters format (eg: Jan for January). Seconds are optional.

example:

Mon 02 Jan 2006 03:04[:05] PM MST

<Content> format: Any text without 2 new lines.

Each entry must be separated with 2 new lines (ie paragraph break).

Optional information

Additional informations could be added at the top of your tinylog file:

# <Tinylog Title>
author: <author>
avatar: <avatar>

<Tinylog Title> Can be any text without a line break.

<author> format: "@authorName@capsule.tld" with authorName the tinylog author name and "capsule.tld" the url of the author capsule. This intends to simplify communication between authors as well as discovery of new tinylog feeds. Example:

author: @bacardi55@gmi.bacardi55.io

<avatar>: 1 emoji or 1 letter. Can be followed by a space and an optional text (eg: to indicate the code for the emoji) example:

avatar: 🐘
avatar: 🦪 (:oyster:, U+1F9AA)