Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:49:20 -0600
From: Chris <chris@hal3000.cx>
To: gopher@complete.org
Subject: [gopher] Re: Strategy: end of Gopher in Mozilla
Message-Id: <20080116084920.083ed2a7@work1.hal3000.cx>
In-Reply-To: <200801160035.m0G0ZKkr011202@floodgap.com>
References: <200801160035.m0G0ZKkr011202@floodgap.com>
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Opera through squid works quite well, however since I run my squid locally this doesn't help. Jeff P and I had worked on gnetcat as a proxy run locally, but gnetcat isn't a solution for MS people. Jeff Had some Mirc code for a proxy to run locally as well. But in the long run, one might feel having a casual user run his own proxy might not appeal to many.
Lynx has always worked well.
Having people run old browsers is an option, but since moz was broke
(bug 158888), might I suggest , if thats the path, to consider advising people to use browsers that "do ports" properly?
As for a FF add-on I think it'd be nice to go our seperate ways.
But then your missing all these people who we (need?) to keep gopher alive.
There are by my count 107 gopher servers around as of 01/09/08,
(yes I updated the Multi Site Jugtail and Veronica recently to include them all) 
And we all know there is usefull info to be had and the protocol is decent sound stable and simple. Maybe we have a chance to grow something that many can use but I dont think we are going to loose the people we have already from this. Should we on the list all take a head count of various browsers we use first and see if maybe we are missing another option? I wonder do we want a cross protocol browser? If so must it do JS and MMFlash? Does it need to run on MS and *nix and ?? . 
I don't know as a community whats the best direction...
I'll take the liberty of naming what I use here.

FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, GNU Hurd and variants:

Gopher (as in the gopher client)
Lynx
Opera (through squid)
mMosaic
Mosaic
BWGOR
Mozzilla and derivitives (the older port friendly ones)
Netscape 4.X

using dillo or browsex and others for the html-ized gopher servers or other wap browsers for the wap served pages of course as well.

So whats best? A gopher client for gopher pages or a multi-protocol client? I flip flop around so much I don't even notice and heck half the time I'm not in X windows anyhow, so I like lynx and the original gopher client the most. Lynx is available for MS . Would we perhaps just make a push towards that, and further if you want an add-on or extension or widget or whatever little app for each web browser of choice, if you just have it open Lynx it makes the add-on, extension, widget or what have you easier to build. Maybe we can make something out of what already _does_ work.
One other thought, go back in time to a browser which worked best, best on the web and best in gopher (ports!) and take it and make a dev from that point of development branching off with a commitment to Gopher and a (weaker?) commitment to html. I say weaker to html because we probably wont as a community have the resources to track development as fast as say FF, but we could probably use their code! The license would have to be looked at depending on which browser we decided on and from what point, but I would venture to say it probably wont be too big an issue from a license stand point.
I think that when a project gets so big that it moves from vote based prioritization to vote based acceptance for bugs you have a real problem anyhow, so to me the least desirable way would be for us to remain dependent on a large group that for the most part has no interest in our "niche" (and all the other crap they stated).

My 2 cents
Chris
Happy Gophering!


On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:35:20 -0800 (PST)
Cameron Kaiser <spectre@floodgap.com> wrote:

> Brandon Eich has spoken on 388195 and has stated that gopher will disappear
> in Mozilla 2, which means Firefox 3 will be the final version with gopher
> support. (And what a jerk he is. Wow. Did you read his comments on SOAP?)
> This is a crushing blow.
> 
> At this point strategy needs to be discussed to have a workable, deployable
> modern client in place for when FF 3 becomes EOLed in a couple years.
> 
> As I see it, we have two options:
> 
> - FF add-on. This has the advantages of integration, but we have to play
> in their sandbox, including dumbing down features that don't work well in
> a browser environment. However, a lot of work is done for us, and it is
> cross-platform. We would need someone/ a team with good knowledge of how
> to do this.
> 
> - Separate application. Either via Mozilla Prism or Adobe AIR, or even a
> cross-platform system like RealBASIC, as far as I'm concerned they'd still
> have to download something, but at least this way it's a product custom
> scoped for Gopher and can do things in a Gopher-like way. Downside is
> reinventing the UI wheel, but that may not be completely bad.
> 
> - Custom clients for various deployments. This means mastery on a particular
> platform, but may be limiting due to fractured development cycles.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, with pulling Gopher out of core, there is no
> reason not to take our ball and play elsewhere, i.e., create a next-gen
> Gopher client and leave Firefox/Mozilla out of the equation. However, I
> can see advantages to either way, and neither option is exclusive.
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
>   Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@floodgap.com
> -- In the end, everything is alright. -- Sarah Goldfarb, "Requiem for a Dream"
> 
> 
> 


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