Gopher.icu talks about bad gopher practices, mainly revolving around
trying to make gopher more web-like, such as gophermap content
[0]. This was essentially my gripe in my post titled 'Gopher
Annoyances' [1], where I said:
Gopher is not the web. Gopher is, well, gopher. Let's keep it that
way.
[0](
gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Computing/The-state-of-gopher.md)
[1](
gopher://gopher.unixlore.net/0/glog/gopher-annoyances.md)
In my post, I didn't mention one point of theirs, which I think is
valid, regarding the use of gophermaps for content. They noted:
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.
I was not aware that there was a workaround for this issue with the
original gopher client, as I have noticed this behavior. Still, it
seems better to stick to type 0 text content. If you like
"clickable" links in such content, some graphical clients will do
this for you automatically. But if you are publishing content on
gopher, I think it is best to try and support the widest possible
type of client.
I also did not mention the use of terminal or ansi escape codes in
gophermaps, which is definitely annoying. I have seen this on the
sites they mention in the article, and a few others. Using lynx (my
preferred gopher client) the page headers with the escape codes look
just as mangled as in the images from gopher.icu's post. I also
wonder about accessibility - I suspect screen readers don't handle
the terminal escapes well, even if they are somehow displayed
properly for sighted users.
Related to this issue, dynamic content _does_ have a place in
gopher, and is mentioned in the gopher RFC, before HTTP and CGI were
even a thing. I commented on this before [2], but the short version
is that you're free to implement anything you like on the
server-side, as long as it doesn't break the gopher protocol.
[2](
gopher://gopher.unixlore.net:70/0/glog/musings-on-gopher-purity.md)
Finally, some of the responses to my original post were interesting
[3].
[3](
gopher://gopher.unixlore.net:70/0/glog/responses-to-gopher-annoyances.md)