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2018-03-27
__G_o_p_h_e_r_m_a_p_s__a_n_d__i_t_e_m__t_y_p_e_s____________________
hile reading through my phlogroll[0] I noticed that some authors
isuse the menu item for whole posts. The text is written with
nformational ('i') items, while the links are regular selectors. At
irst I thought: "Well this is nice, people can just follow the
eferenced links." But after some more thoughs I think that it is a
ad idea in general.
his is probably the equivalent of using tables for layouting the
age in HTML. It will deteriorate the usefulness and semantics of a
irectory item. That is a directory item is just a summary or certain
iew on a choosen set of selectors. Selectors in gopher are really
lat and without hierarchy although a lot of servers use slashes '/'
s hierarchy markers. It's the directory item that imposes a
ierarchy which should be adapted to the task. Information should be
asy to find and navigation should be simple.
n its most exaggerated form a gophermap makes the reader jump
hrough dozens of basically empty hierarchy directory listings before
eading content. The phlog that has years -> months -> posts
rganisations clearly trys its reader's patience. A better phlog
xample would be one that has a directory showing the last 5 posts,
hen a directory showing all posts or sorted by month. The user gets
o the interesting content fast.
side effect of the selectors having no hierarchy: You can easily
odify your directory entries, the selectors to the actual content
tays the same! To recycle the phlog example once more: Moving posts
o archive pages is just a modification in the directory entries, no
elector has to change! References from other gopher servers will
till work as expected!
ow as I said in another post[1] crawlers should traverse and index
irectory entries. What happens if such an indexer sees such a
isguised menu/post?
herefore I have decided to keep simple files as my post items. I can
rite them up in any markup I choose and clients such as VF-1 can
imply grep for URIs (or your script can).
eep it with the spirit of RFC-1436. Keep it simple!
__References________________________________________________________
0]: gopher://vernunftzentrum.de:70/1/ckeen/sites.gph
1]: gopher://vernunftzentrum.de:70/0/ckeen/phlog/2018-03-25-Gopher-crawlers-and…
