From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre@floodgap.com>
Message-Id: <200704111606.l3BG6noo010418@floodgap.com>
Subject: [gopher] Re: Mozilla bugs about Gopher, and a dangerous one
In-Reply-To: <20070411104615.275a47eb@work1.hal3000.cx> from Chris at "Apr 11,
 7 10:46:15 am"
To: gopher@complete.org
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:06:49 -0700 (PDT)
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> As for having the search engines stick to port 70.
> First I disagree, thats not a gopher problem its a moz problem .

I agree with this also. :2347 was always the standard Veronica port. In fact,
it's non-standard of *me* to run V-2 on the regular port and I've even been
mulling over putting a mirror onto port 2347.

> And that brings me back to... why? because Moz/Firefox is broken?
> I understand you feel most people will be using Firefox. I also feel it
> should be fixed, or drop gopher from it's core and have the option to open
> lynx when a gopher:// address is used. Such as gopher has an option for a
> web page. below is what shows up when going to an html page from gopher:

I think this was reasonable only in that specific situation, however. The
gopher clients were never intended as multi-protocol systems, and it made
good sense to spawn external handlers.

However, this is no longer the case as most web browsers handle the kitchen
sink (as in "everything but the"). You still have browsers minimally handling
FTP as a secondary protocol, for example, and people now expect a unified
Swiss-Army knife solution. There are also lots of Windows users who don't
have a secondary client.

Besides, the argument that it's broken and should be fixed or removed,
frankly, applies just as well to HTML. Mozilla-core is less broken than
Internet Explorer, but it still has its deficiencies :)

If we lose Mozilla-core support for gopher, this will be a serious blow to
the community. I certainly intend to maintain the HTTP<->Gopher proxy, which
is very popular, but it robs casual users of an easy path to browse Gopher if
support were eroded further by forcing them to do more to get it.

-- 
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@floodgap.com
-- It's tradition, that makes it okay. -- Weird Al, "Weasel Stomping Day" -----