The UMN Gopher client is old, and seems to be no longer
maintained, but I still like it. The source is somewhat
easy to work with, and I maintain a version for myself
with a few fixes and modifications. I need to update the
source for those modifications and put them up on gopher
for others to use if they're interested.
Ideally, someone with a lot more skill would take up the
management/maintenance of the UMN client, but I'm not
sure such a person exists out there. For that purpose, I
make small changes here and there to suit my needs.
Recently, one thing that has been bothering me is the
inability to scroll down and read multi-page posts as
generated by certain servers/scripts. Some phlog scripts
will generate entire posts filled with the 'i' line
types. Unfortunately, the UMN client all but ignores
those lines; it spits them out for the end-user to see,
and it counts them, but it doesn't allow for any kind of
navigation with them. So, phlogs that work that way, if
they don't have any other item types at the bottom of the
post, aren't very readable in the UMN client.
I went into manager.c in the umn client source and simply
made it treat 'i' lines similarly to other lines. Now,
I can scroll down on those phlog posts... and through
every other 'i' line out there. This is not ideal; it is
nice to skip those lines when using cursor movement. But,
I'd rather have a few extra cursor movements required
here and there than to not be able to read what people
are writing (or to have to load a different client, which
is what I was doing.)
Mostly this is a problem caused by modern usage models.
Phlogs that use only text files work perfectly. Still, with
the power of CGI and scripting, and the reality of its use
in gopherspace, I really think the clients have to keep up
if they possibly can. Hopefully the UMN client can stay with
us for a while longer.
