The lack of images made Gemini unworkable for me. I know it's by design, but illustrations are an important part of my writing.

It's more sensible to build the sort of websites I want to see, and to use Reader Mode for other people's websites.

I found it funny that they propagate the no image thing and the screenshots of android clients showcased some sites that did ascii art and other ways to "fake images".

Yeah - images are an integral part of the www.

When I was younger, I thought Gemini was very cool mostly because it was an alternative protocol to the mainstream. It made me feel very inner-circle in the development world, for some reason.

As I've grown, I've come to learn I'm a very visual learner. I've learned that "clear is kind", and for many, image and text are both important, but many images have a way of conveying what is difficult to express in words without being overly verbose.

I agree, illustrations are an essential part, especially when teaching something.

Some clients have a setting to inline images, or/and a shortcut to do so on the current page. Most clients can display images when the user follows a link to one. So images are quite useless as decorations (as most will probably not see them) but if an article contains useful images most users will be able to see those.

The Gemini protocol does not mandate lack of images. It is simply left up to the implementation to decide how (or whether) to display those.

One of the most popular Gemini browsers, Lagrange, shows images inline once downloaded. But you need to click their link to ensure you want to see the content first.

E.g., view this in lagrange to see what I mean: gemini://8by3.net/~xkcd/