AFAIK, Gemini is the protocol and Gemtext are one of the types of documents. Be aware that you can transfer HTML documents over Gemini, and that many clients render more than just Gemtext. My own little client Fafi, built with Racket, can render Gemtext, images, RSS, and Markdown. If you attempt to transfer using HTTP such as having an HTTP link in a Gemtext, it will simply launch the default browser instead. I believe some clients will actually render the HTML in a webview.
Precisely, how many people are really interested Gemini because it's an HTTP like protocol over TLS+TCP instead of HTTP over TLS+TCP? It seems gemtext files are the real draw and those would be a lot less hassle to just do over HTTPS in the first place (for both browsers and custom applications).
But who knows, maybe all of the people hyped about Gemeni are just really excited about TOFU or something and just happen to not be interested in actually hosting non gemtext documents by sheer chance. More likely it seems it's more a form of gatekeeping than anything about the protocol of document format itself. It's almost like if programmers decided .md files should only be served and rendered to markdown clients over an HTTP-like markdown protocol - yeah, it'll keep less programmers looking at it but there is nothing special that couldn't have been done by serving the .md over HTTPS outside the "cool kids club" portion.
In practice it's mostly just programmers, so yeah that's what it mostly is. Gatekeeping to keep the "normies" out. There's nothing wrong with that but I wish the community were more honest about it.
