Server, Web Client, Web Proxy
Hi all
In recent days, I've been working on a web client for Gopher. My most
important design goal was reflowing text such that I could browser
Gopher on mobile devices. It supports TLS as well. Feel free to use it:
https://alexschroeder.ch/soweli-lukin
This web client actually started out as a simple addition to a Gopher
server, which in turn just started as proof of concept for a "new
Gopher": I wanted to see what Gopher would have looked like if the
creators had used URLs for linking instead of Gopher menus. Anyway, long
story short: I wrote a server in Perl 5 that simply serves files in a
directory. I suspect this might only be of interest to you if you really
like Perl 5.
While I was at it, I also wanted to learn more about web proxies. You
the ones: the stuff you have to add to your browser configuration in
corporate environments where they want to spy on all the incoming and
outgoing traffic. I wrote a web proxy that translates HTTP requests into
Gopher requests. If you use it, you can browse Gopher using a web
browser without using the web client. I know, silly. I actually don't
know of a use case for it. But perhaps you can think of one.
To illustrate, assume you have access to w3m and not to lynx, and none
of the usual web clients are accessible to you. You could start the web
proxy on your server on port 3000 and tell your w3m to use it:
http_proxy=http://localhost:3000/ w3m http://alexschroeder.ch
It really is just a toy.
Source for all three programs is available:
https://alexschroeder.ch/cgit/nimi-mute/about/
Anyway, thanks for reading. Enjoy Gopher, where the simplicity of the
protocol makes it possible to built tiny toys like these! :)
Cheers
Alex
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