Re: OT: rude behaviour
On 2025-11-14, cat K. wrote:
>> On 15 Nov 2025, at 7:42 AM, John Goerzen
>> <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 15 2025, cat K. wrote:
>>
>>> while you are correct that the i in Gopher's itemtypes has been displayed by
>>> most clients for the past 20 years if you know your history you'll also know
>>> it's also not RFC compliant, it was not covered in the original spec and just
>>
>> The RFC was never adopted as a standard (it was informational) and I
>> don't believe there has ever been a point in time where Gopher behavior
>> in practice was limited by RFC.
>>
>> Just to name some examples - by 1992, which is before the RFC was
>> published, UMN gopher supported item types s, e, c, g, h, and M which
>> were not in the RFC. Just to note, the same people that worked on UMN
>> gopher were the authors of RFC1436, so it's not that they weren't aware
>> of the state of Gopher.
>>
>> UMN gopher supported 'i' by at least January 1994, but the changelogs
>> imply it was earlier in the gopher 2.0 development cycle that it was
>> added. I simply don't have the earlier 2.0 releases.
>>
>>> maybe I should have been more succinct in saying most Gopher browsers do render
>>> it but don't handle or display it correctly. some ignore the escape and just
>>
>> That's a bit of a stretch. What character set do you use? Note that
>> Gopher has no way of indicating that, and predates the wide usage of
>> Unicode.
>>
>> Terminals now, and more notably then, do not have a uniform set of
>> standards on how to address color, underline, etc., nor even a uniform
>> set of capabilities in that way.
>>
>> No matter what client I use, if I pull up that on my DEC vt510 it is
>> unlikely to display like you intended.
>>
>> Basically, I think trying to argue whether something is "correct" based
>> on a protocol from 1994 that was implemented by de facto consensus
>> rather than committee-based standard is not going to get anyone
>> anywhere. Then as now, some clients displayed type i and some didn't.
>>
>> Neither was wrong.
>>
>> As a side note, at the moment I can't tell if you are actively trying to
>> harm the Gopher community or get some weird pleasure pointless
>> arguments. In either case, I'd kindly ask you reflect on your behavior
>> and whether it is really serving the ends you state you want to see.
>>
>
> I'm not sure I see your point and re-reading your response I'd even
> say we're on the same side. I wouldn't expect a DEC vt510 from 1993 to
> render my Gopher hole as I intended in 2025 any more than I would
> expect Mosaic to properly render YouTube.
Nice example. That could be as destructive to usability in gopher as the
web 2.0 is to web browsers.
I'd expect Mosaic to render mostly OK a decent website.
A VT510 can do a lot properly. I'm not typing this on one mainly because
of desk arrangement issues (it might meanwhile need some maintenance
too). It actually works great for text-based content, including e-mail
and network news.
> and what does it matter what
> character set I use when you immediately state that Gopher has no way
> of knowing or even caring?
It matters more precisely because there's no way to convey it, how do
you know what to pick?
> a better question would be what browser or software I use and how
> could your browser or software better handle edge cases.
>
> on your last point, I'm not sure how I could actively harm a
> corpse...
Well, I guess this in itself might answer John's question...
> weird pleasure on the other hand? probably for another
> mailing list.
--
Nuno Silva
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