Re: [gopher] A letter to Mozilla Foundation
> > I did find a Google Chrome request someone filed to add gopher to that.
> > It was pretty crisply rejected even though a lot of people joined in.
>
> I found two requests (maybe they should have been merged), 5106 and
> 11345
>
> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=5106
> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11345
>
> both stamped WONTFIX.
>
> (There is also bug 30840, if people are told it's an unsupported
> protocol and that they need another program to browse it, it's far
> better than getting a google web search, no matter what is the
> unsupported protocol.)
>
> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=30840
I agree. It also makes it possible for an arbitrary extension to intercept
the protocol instead of relying on the trick Overbite Chrome does, which is
to notice that the user is going to a search page with a gopher URL in it
and snatch control (the way the [refused] patch to that issue is written).
> > I think anything helping to encourage its hierarchical nature serves to
> > make it more distinct, and therefore more valuable/relevant.
>
> It's gopher's main strength. And at the same time, it's one of the
> greatest weaknesses of the web. Some parts of the web are sometimes just
> a big mess.
One thing I really do want to work on, however, is something I've termed
"reverse discoverability." Say you have a menu on host xx pointing to a
terminal document like an item type 0 on host yy. You can't find out what
other documents yy has in that directory reliably, though you can guess.
IOW, you can't see the menu that the document on yy exists in, just that
xx links to it.
The initial start I'm looking at is to help people used to the web construct
relative analyzable paths. While selectors are ultimately opaque, there are
conventions. The reflex is to turn
gopher://yy/0/menu/doc.txt
into
gopher://yy/0/menu/
which doesn't work, it should be item type 1. I think we can pretty much
reliably conclude that any selector ending in a slash on just about any sane
filesystem means a directory, not a file, and Overbite should pop a requester
suggesting to change the item type to 1 for them. Then they learn a bit about
Gopher, and it's easy. Similarly, the trivial case of
gopher://yy/0
(or any itemtype other than 1) should just be automatically changed to 1.
This doesn't handle the situation of
gopher://yy/0/menu
but I think we can agree that a priori we can't conclude what menu should
be typed as. And plenty of text files have embedded tabs, so content sniffing
wouldn't work. But this covers the common case.
I'm open to ideas to making reverse discoverability possible, even if it
requires a bit of server cooperation. What do you think?
Eventually Overbite will also put "return to root menu" XUL overlays even
over terminal documents so that you at least have that, though the pure HTML
approach right now is appealing because it's adaptable to those Mozilla
browsers that lack XUL such as Camino and K-Meleon.
> Is there any J2ME gopher client? That'd make a good use for J2ME+GPRS
> cell phones.
There sure is! And I didn't even write it; I got contacted by somebody who
really liked the concept of Overbite Android and wrote his own for his
Nokia E51. It's a MIDlet; it should run on anything, even a Crackberry.
http://felix.plesoianu.ro/index.php/page:Software:PocketGopher
> Thinking of Mozilla Suite and Gopher reminds me of this screenshot :-)
>
> gopher://gopher.quux.org/g/Software/Gopher/screenshots/mozilla.gif
>
> I'm sad I never used this, looks... interesting!
I remember using it back in the day. My main objection to the way it worked
was that it sorted selectors, which destroyed menus, and had no i itemtype.
But the tree metaphor was compelling, if unwieldy in massive menus.
A really futuristic interface would allow this sort of thing in 2D rather
than simply an expanding vertical tree. But that might be a little too alien
for a web-addled world. :)
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@floodgap.com
-- "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving." -----
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