[gopher] De-lurking...
Hello, world!
I've been lurking this list for a good while now, appreciating the
nostalgia of Gopher as well as its relevance today, which, given the
trend towards speed at the (not altogether great) expense of
multimedia in mobile business applications, could be not at all
insignificant. I've always felt that Gopher is not the dead ancestor
to the World Wide Web, but is a sister technology, just as FTP, IMAP,
and NNTP are.
For a few years, I have been into Gopher as more-or-less a fast, lean
representation of trends and news, as well as an archive medium and
other interesting, unconventional uses of this hypertextual,
hierarchic medium. I have always been interested in the
less-travelled paths, at least in the world of commerce (in the broad
sense---I do not mean business administration, but simply the act of
purveying solutions and services). For instance, I am fascinated by
the Unix operating system, and use it daily at work and at school;
although consumers see only Windows, they remain blissfully unaware of
the Real Operating Systems like AIX, HP/UX, and OpenVMS.
I like to see the whole picture, including what transpires behind the
scenes; therefore, I have always been aware of these systems, and have
a particular soft spot for AIX, which I run at home.
However, these systems are fronted by large corporations, so it is
only fair that potential clients know about these systems and the
alternatives (including Microsoft Windows--ick!). Sadly, Gopher, as
an open technology, has no such corporate advocacy group, and it is
impossible to bring corporate attention to it, despite there being
many uses for it: the first being online news, and the second being
phlogging (sounds like something the Royal Navy does to disobedient
seamen).
I've enjoyed the ride, gang. I was with you when the news hit that
Firefox would lose Gopher support. This was a tremendous blow---the
great majority of users will not install a plug-in merely to browse a
handful of sites catering mainly to hobbyists. It's the
work-to-reward ratio, I guess. If something comes with the kitchen
sink, users will be drawn to experiment with it; however, if the
kitchen sink is detached, only a few people will make an effort to
attach it.
That said, I am not a great fan of Firefox, Overbite or no Overbite,
when it comes to browsing Gopherspace. I can honestly say that my
favourite Gopher, which is guaranteed to be found on every UNIX
installation, is Lynx (renders pages in 5 seconds or less). Yes,
that's right, Lynx, which is older than me (no big surprise there, I
use TECO as my primary editor) is the Gopher client that I can depend
on 100%. If I'm using one of the more modern Linux distros, I will
usually download and install GopherVR. At this point, I have got to
thank Dr Kaiser for maintaining this excellent piece of work, and I
hope he gets any bugs worked out to really make this software shine.
Thanks, Doc, I'm behind you all the way. More thanks to Dr Kaiser for
TTYtter, which is the only way I ever twitter aside from my
CrackBerry, and for Overbite Android.
My point being? That's for you to figure out.
Yours in support,
Nick Matavka.
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