On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 05:43:19PM +0100, Peter Tynan wrote: > 2008/6/14 Andrew Sackville-West <andrew@farwestbilliards.com>: > > On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 04:42:08PM +0100, Peter Tynan wrote: > >> > >> Iceweasel (and FireFox) prior to version 3 despite a few bugs were > >> the most convenient GUI gopher browser available and the loss of > >> gopher support would be a big blow for gopher users. > > > > that would be a problem. ... > > Just to summarise the problems - Iceweasel (and FireFox) is the only > "integrated" GUI gopher browser, most other gopher browsers just show > the gopher menu tree and in some cases plain text documents with > Iceweasel I can view images, html documents, flash files, sound files > etc (assuming I have the appropriate plug-in) where as other gopher > browsers would have to open another application, also other GUI gopher > browsers have suffered from a lack of development in recent years > (mainly (IMHO) because Iceweasel/FireFox did the job so well) which > means they can look quite dated and lack a certain user friendliness > (as far as I know the console gopher client -is the only dedicated > gopher client still under active development). so for me, this is an interesting situation. But I don't use gopher. For you it must be downright annoying. Here's how it's interesting. Firefox provided a full-blown modern gopher browser that essentially killed the other gui gopher browsers by being vastly superior. Now firefox has dropped gopher support. I think that will do one of two things: 1) largely kill what remains of gopher, 2) spur development of gui gopher browsers that have languished. I would hope for the second option. I don't think it serves anyone to have a single dominant player for a given protocol. If the gopher protocol still has life in it (and I gather that it does), then the community will be better served by having motivation to pick up development of the other browsers, or perhaps incorporate better gopher support into the other web browsers. .02 A
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