Re: Questions about URLs for Gopher search items
> $ client gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/7/v2/vs%09cheese
>
> then:
[...]
> * The Floodgap Gopher-HTTP proxy also asks me to enter parameters.
Thanks for spotting this, it's a regression from an anti-XSS overhaul I did
a few months ago. Fixed.
> If we insist that 7 is the correct type here,
> then client complexity increases (slightly) because accessing a type 7
> URL means the client has to inspect the selector to know what to do. If
> we use 1 here, clients which correctly decode URLs (which appears to be
> the minority, but that is an obvious and hard to deny fault of those
> clients, which is not specific to search at all) will just work without
> the need to inspect the selector. Client authors then do not need to
> ever think about URLs with search terms in them as a special case at
> all. Surely this is the cleaner solution?
I think using 1 is the cleaner solution, but I believe strongly in Postel's
law and I have tried to have the clients I maintain accept both.
> The majority of clients cannot correctly navigate to RFC 4266 style URLs
> with search terms in them. The best known and most widely used Gopher
> search engine, if you submit a query to it using a tab in the selector,
> will feed you a result directory where the "Back to the beginning" etc.
> links have item type 1 and use the alternative CGI syntax - perhaps
> precisely because doing it the other way confuses many clients?
Pretty much that.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@floodgap.com
-- Proponents of other opinions will be merrily beaten to a bloody pulp. ------
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