GOPHER 2.0 - THE PROS AND CONS OF GOPHER
I couldn't think of a better title than "Gopher 2.0" for what
follows. I've been stewing over some thoughts about port 70 and
markup languages for a while now.
In particular, my desire to write about this resurged when I read
"Gopherspace Impressions" by FallingKnife. [0]
"As a newcomer, my question is just... why wouldn't
we want to be able to render multiple files in a
folder as gophermap files, leveraging the best expe-
riences that gopher can provide?"
Or to put it another way: do we need to limit ourselves to plain
text (with no links) and Gophermaps (clearly not intended for
content)?
Gopher: what I like and don't like
=================================================================
I have a lot of thoughts, but to get started, I'd just like to
summarize my own personal Gopher pros and cons.
What I like about Gopher:
* Simplicity of the protocol
* Emphasis on plain-text
* Lack of embedded content, links in plain sight
Where Gopher falls short:
* Hyperlinking
* Text content with hard newlines
* Lack of crypto
How to solve?
=================================================================
I find myself in complete agreement with Solderpunk [1][2][3] in
terms of a desire for something slightly more than Gopher and a
(lot) less than the Web.
I also want to mention Auzymoto's extremely interesting post ti-
tled "Hypertext In Gopher" which gets my brain going every time I
read it. [4]
There are at least two distinct issues at play:
1. Gopher the protocol
2. Gopher the content
I also have some really "out-there" thoughts about how Gopher-
like clients could work. :-)
[0]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/fallingknife/phlog/20190410-impressions.txt
[1]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/why-gopher-needs-crypto.txt
[2]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/more-on-gopher-and-crypto.txt
[3]
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/pondering-whats-inbetween-gopher-and-the-web.txt
[4]
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/auzymoto/phlog/2018/jun/phlog0011