2018-03-03
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Today's post is about gopher clients. For years I have been using
lynx and just recently I came across [solderpunk's][0] [vf-1][1].
It is written in python and made for easy browsing using the keyboard
in a terminal. I have been using it for reading the [moku pona][2]
output for a week now.

Besides these there are a couple more, including [sacc][3] which
basically made the same design choice by using link numbers as
navigational input from the user.

However all of these clients do lack one feature: The ability to
talk directly to a SOCKS proxy like Tor to browse hidden services.
All of them rely on a LD_PRELOAD trick done by [torsocks][4]. The
bitreich gopher has [instructions][5] on how to use this mechanism.

A couple of years ago I have started to implement my own gopher
client because of this and it turned out to be an easy addition.
It lacked a lot of features like downloading files, bookmarks and
easy navigation but it got the job done.

Since I regained interest in gopher again and since I am running
even my own gopher server now I decided to dust it off a bit and
implement some missing feature on a daily basis. This way I should
get a nicer client by the end of the week.

Let's see how this goes.

The client is implemented in [CHICKEN Scheme][6] using ncurses.
Today I managed to revice it successfully and changed the entry
display by deleting some debugging output.

At the moment you can find the work in progress [here][7] and the
ncurses egg needs a little [patch][8].

So it is not ready for public consumption yet, but if you do feel
adventurous, give it a try!


___References________________________________________________________

[0]: gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/solderpunk
[1]: gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/solderpunk/phlog/introducing-vf1.txt
[2]: gopher://alexschroeder.ch:70/02018-02-05_Moku_Pona
[3]: gopher://bitreich.org:70/1/scm/sacc
[4]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torsocks.git
[5]: gopher://bitreich.org:70/1/onion
[6]: https://www.call-cc.org
[7]: gopher://vernunftzentrum.de/1/ckeen/holymoly/index.gph
[8]: gopher://vernunftzentrum.de/1/ckeen/holymoly/files/ncurses-trunk.diff.gph

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