# The state of gopher
I've become a little frustrated with gopher recently. The feelings
are mixed because I'm happy there is more content, created by real
people. However, many people are arriving in this space and although
they bitterly complain about the state of the web, they are bringing
ideas and content from the web to gopher.
If you want to come to a new space, presumably because you are
looking for something different, then please leave the web on the
web. It's still there, you can visit any time. Just fire up that fat
browser and off you go! Just please don't pollute gopher with it.
## Standards and common practice
When you start in radio, or many other disciplines, you are informed
of the rules and are expected to listen, to get a feel for the
etiquette before you participate. Because it's so easy to fire up a
gopher server or get a tilde that provides space these days, it's
easy to bypass the learning phase and to jump straight in. The rules,
in our case, are laid out in the RFC for gopher[1].
[1](
gopher://gopher.32kb.net:70/0/rfc/rfc1436.txt)
### 70 Columns
Gopher is from a time where your average terminal had a physical
limit of 80 columns. To give some space for the type indicator the
RFC states "the display string should be kept under 70 characters in
length". Now, modern terminals are capable of more, but by ignoring
this standard you make things awful for people, with older systems,
or those who view in split screens[2]. It's a slippery slope to
becoming like the modern web, where developers don't seem to give a
crap about standards, backward compatibility or accessibility.
### Gopher maps are for navigation, not content
There is a habit forming of people misusing maps to create content
pages with pseudo in-line-links, like on the web. The problem is that
pages become full of info lines, which the original gopher client
ignores. So when your content spans multiple pages, the original
gopher client cannot page down to see anything after the first page.
Another side effect of this is that, if the content is a menu you
can no longer press 'd' to download it, as was intended for files.
You are breaking functionality of the original gopher client, written
by the people who created the gopher RFC. Doesn't that hint to you
that maybe it wasn't designed for that purpose and that maybe you
shouldn't do it?
*clause* - I consider it excusable only for creating applications
requiring interaction, as there is no other way to do it, with the
proviso that links must exist at regular intervals throughout the
page to ensure it remains scrollable in the original gopher client.
*Addendum 05/02/2024*
The RFC position on non-core item types, which includes 'i', is that
the client implementation may choose whether to display them:
> 3.5 Building clients
>
> If a client does not understand what a say, type 'B' item (not a
> core item) is, then it may simply ignore the item in the directory
> listing; the user never even has to see it. Alternatively, the
> item could be displayed as an unknown type.
To put your content within a non-core type is therefore not advised.
Additionally, there is a commit[3] to the client code which notes
that it was a deliberate change to "Skip over type 'i' items". Maybe
they foresaw the potential for misuse, or it was already being
misused, and decided to address it in this way?
[3](
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jgoerzen/gopher/master/doc/client.changes)
### Gopher clients are not terminals
Please do not use terminal escape codes to attempt colours and
artwork in gopher. They may work in your particular client but
generally they don't and look horrendous to the casual user[4] [5].
## Conclusion
The saddest part for me is that many of these individuals appear to
be in IT or technical disciplines and have some proficiency.
Unfortunately they choose either not to read the RFC, blatantly
ignore it, or adhere to best practice. Don't be that person ...
