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Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 16:34:26 -0500
From: Ralph Furmaniak <sugaku@sympatico.ca>
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Subject: [gopher] Re: Gopher wishlist
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All good points.
Lets clear up what makes gopher gopher, and not just an http wannabee.  Some of
the main things (distinctions) are that gopher presents strict text menus, and
each line is either text, or a single link (ie, no single word linking as this
can get messy).

Yes, we should add things to fix problems and not for the coolness factor, and
that is why we want people talking about what they like and dislike.

I do not quite agree about backwards compatability.  Gopher+ was designed to be
backwards compatible, but if you look you'll see that the client request
specifically signals whether it be gopher0 or gopher+, and the server sends back
different data depending.  umn gopher client (AFAIK) always sends a '$' request
to the server, and the umn server then sends back something that would cause a
gopher0 client to choke and die.

So similarly, we can add new things that a client can request.  I'm not really
sure what things can be done, but other people should have some ideas.

What could be put into the header/metadata?  I don't know.  I'm sure many people
would be against implementing cookies <g>.  There could be a title included
(might be some benefits, might not.  depends on the client), and maybe a
content-type.  I guess there isn't much use; gopher already has sufficient
capabilities.