Well I dunno what's up with the Gophernicus server here...
Something Interesting about gopher text documents (item type 0) is that
if you just type out a gopher URI into a text file that string (URL)
will render as a link. Not like a gophermap file that follows a specific
format that I'll illustrate below, you just type out the gopher URL and
the server will render that as a valid Gopher URI. How kewl is that?
So here goes...
In a 'gophermap' file, the server parses it in a certain prescribed way
that is not so intuitive at first, but you'll get the hang of it. The
format looks like this:
1Text String Goes Here<TAB>/<TAB>hostname.sld.tld<TAB>70
the very first character on the line specifies the item type. In the
example above we used the number (1), which specifies a directory. A
zero (0), for example would specify a text document. This very first
character on the line only becomes special when there is a <TAB> that
is entered somewhere else on that line.
What follows the special item type character is a text string to be
displayed, followed by a <TAB> (now that first character is parsed as
an item type by the server), followed by the path of the directory
relative to the server root ("DocumentRoot" in Apache parlance).
Then follows the next <TAB> character, and the hostname of the server,
followed by an (optional) port number, which will default to "70" if
not specified.
In a text document, however, you just type in any old URL like so:
https://www.sld.tld or
gopher://hostname.sld.tld or even something like
telnet://hostname.sld.tld or ssh://hostname.sld.tld and the gophernicus
server (as will most others) simply renders it as a link, and just as
you would type into the address bar of your browser telnet/ssh client,
etc.
Anyway.....
The following are examples of how the following URLs will succeed or
fail, as the gophernicus server here at SDF treats them, along with the
error messages you will expect to see (depending on your client). The
interesting thing is that the Gophernicus server here doesn't handle
these links the same (whether you select/click them or type them into
your client's address bar).
The odd thing? the server treats some of these URIs differently
depending on the server you specify in the link. i.e., whether you
specify sdf.lonestar.org or sdf.org.
NOTE: I did NOT test these URIs with the "gopher.club" hostname, and
there are probably others as well. Suffice it to say this behavior is
odd, so if you have an explanation I would really enjoy hearing it, and
you can reach me here via email at
[email protected]
So without further ado, let's get started, shall we?
# sdf.lonestar.org (works differently than sdf.org)
gopher://sdf.lonestar.org/1/users/tallship # doesn't work
# Renders a blank page - Adding a trailing slash (/) as in below,
# does work though..
gopher://sdf.lonestar.org/1/users/tallship/ # works
gopher://sdf.lonestar.org:70/1/users/tallship # works
gopher://sdf.lonestar.org:70/1/users/tallship/ # works
# sdf.org (works differently than sdf.lonestar.org)
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/tallship # works
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/tallship/ # works
gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tallship # works
gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tallship/ # works
# Testing a link directly to a file: (sdf.lonestar.org)
# The file we're linking to here is: ./just_like_a_yo-yo.txt
gopher://sdf.lonestar.org/0/users/tallship/just_like_a_yo-yo.txt # works
gopher://sdf.lonestar.org:70/0/users/tallship/just_like_a_yo-yo.txt # works
# Testing a link directly to a file: (sdf.org)
# The file we're linking to here is: ./just_like_a_yo-yo.txt
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/tallship/just_like_a_yo-yo.txt # works
gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/tallship/just_like_a_yo-yo.txt # works
Well that's about all for right now :) More later when I've got time.
Ciao!
