User solderpunk wrote a great piece of potential changes to
gopher[1]. The last line reads "I will come at you in a
dark alley with a bladed instrument." You should read the
rest, so you can be sure to avoid this particular end.
I'd line up behind solderpunk's banner, as defined in his
post, in a heartbeat.
There is one thing that bothers me about RFC 1436. On page 4
it reads:
"The first character on each line tells whether the line
describes a document, directory, or search service... The
first character of the line is really defining the type of
item described on this line."
All other characters after the first and up to the first tab
describe the selector (a "title" of sorts.) Then you have
various technical items, seperated by tabs. None of this is
news.
What I don't quite understand is, why did they limit the
item type to a single character, and even that not being
seperated by a tab like everything else? Instead of that,
they could have simply stated that all characters up to the
first tab define the type of item. Then, the item type could
be any number of characters, including just one single
character. That would be a lot more extensible, and a lot
easier on the eyes ultimately.
Yeah, it's not an earth-shattering change, nor is it
technically impressive. But it would be cleaner, easier to
understand, and more sensical. The only issue with it, I
think, would be that it would break old gopher clients...
and that alone might make it a deal-breaker.
[1]
gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/on-gopher-conservatism.txt
