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Re: [gopher] Question

I agree that these directory listings don't officially have a standardization. However, most such directory views I do come across are hosted on Apache, making that sort of a defacto standard in my books. The difference here between say FTP/Gopher is that not all servers offer a directory view and the server still prefers to give the client index.html if it exists.

With that said, using an HTML parser and a server that does offer directory views, it'd be rather trivial to parse all the A elements to say render a Gopher menu.

Gopher is much more structured than either HTTP or FTP when it comes to how directories are fed to the client, and there's actually a standard and RFC involved.

I'd be interested in making a gopher HTTP gateway/proxy to show how HTTP can be fully rendered in Gopherspace. I'd do a Debian mirror, as they provide directory views over HTTP.

On February 11, 2015 3:02:59 PM MST, Kim Holviala <kim@holviala.com> wrote:
No, you are wrong, HTTP does not provide you with a standardized directory view. FTP and Gopher both provide ANY client a directory tree with files that is simple to browse (although it can be argued whether FTP has any actual standard for directory structures). HTTP has nothing like this - it will never provide you a list of files, just HTML pages (which may or may not look like a directory listing).

Of course WebDAV changes all that providing proper dir/file structure over HTTP in a way which is better than either FTP or Gopher. But no one ever exposes WebDAV to all clients, even anonymous.


- Kim


On 11 Feb 2015, at 23:56, Kevin Veroneau <kevin@veroneau.net> wrote:

I'm sorry Kim but that's not a good explanation to someone who knows HTTP server. These days most HTTP servers including Apache provide directory views.

Here is my personal distinction and why I like using Gopher. Gopher is more similar to FTP than it is to HTTP. Gopher is like a power user's FTP server. Where FTP falls flat, gopher shines. FTP cannot perform database queries, remote searches, run server-side code, or accept input from the user. Sure a custom built FTP server could be made to query a database, but it cannot request a string of text from the user.

Gopher is also vastly more lightweight than the likes of HTTP. Gopher doesn't use headers or content types. Gopher is overall a much simpler protocol to implement and can be used to say fetch lightweight status reports and logs from a server. I use Gopher to view server logs without needing to configure and run either a full fledged HTTP or FTP server. And since there are clients on mobile, it's a cinch to read this info.

To me, Gopher still has it's place and I feel it's way under used for what it can do in this day and age.

On February 11, 2015 2:32:24 PM MST, Kim Holviala <kim@holviala.com> wrote:
 On 11 Feb 2015, at 17:29, NN NN <aepedia@yandex.ru> wrote:
 
 For what reasons is Gopher needed if there are FTP and HTTP?


FTP provides directories but no hyperlinks. HTTP provides hyperlinks but no directories. Gopher provides both hyperlinks and directories combining both FTP and HTTP. Of course no one uses Gopher, but that’s another story :-) 



- Kim





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