Re: Gopher text rendering ideas
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
So I gave it a quick try using my gopher web proxy. It worked as such:
0. Read the whole text file in memory
1. Search for "\n\n", mark it as end of paragraph
2. Search for " " (3 spaces) inside that paragraph
3.0 No occurence ? Wrap paragraph in <p> tags
3.1 Matched ? Wrap paragraph in <pre> tags
4. Move pointer past the paragraph
5. Start over till EOF
It worked great overall ! I browsed a few holes like this, and all
ASCII arts / code snippets rendered perfectly. Actual text paragraphs
were also pleasant to read with proportional fonts.
However,
A few things I didn't think about looked odd, because the <p> tag
reflow text by default. Things like lists, or quoted text looked bad:
1. First item 2. Second item 3. Third item
> This was a quoted text with > hard wraps in it, that should
definitely > not be reflowed.
Some texts or graphic stuff looked odd as well, like banners like this
that are 70 char wide:
||<><><><><><><....>||
As a conclusion, I think that my « naive » approach was a bit too
naive, so for now I reverted to full monospace font for the time being,
until I find a better way to do it, or give up on it entirely.
If someone has an idea, feel free to contact me to discuss it !
--
~wgs
20200925.1640
