Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list gopher); Wed, 20 Mar 2002 20:03:45 -0500 (EST) Return-Path: <abg@charter.net> Delivered-To: gopher@complete.org Received: from dc-mx01.cluster1.charter.net (dc-mx01.cluster0.hsacorp.net [209.225.8.11]) by pi.glockenspiel.complete.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E20273B8BE for <gopher@complete.org>; Wed, 20 Mar 2002 20:03:44 -0500 (EST) Received: from [24.241.116.69] (HELO charter.net) by dc-mx01.cluster1.charter.net (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.5.3) with ESMTP id 27178978 for gopher@complete.org; Wed, 20 Mar 2002 20:12:10 -0500 Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 06:59:00 -0600 (CST) From: gurno@charter.net Subject: [gopher] Re: The road ahead To: gopher@complete.org In-Reply-To: <20020320165126.A2219@mothra.dyndns.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain Message-ID: <auto-000027178978@dc-mx01.cluster1.charter.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-archive-position: 518 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: gopher-bounce@complete.org Errors-to: gopher-bounce@complete.org X-original-sender: gurno@charter.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: gopher@complete.org List-help: <mailto:ecartis@complete.org?Subject=help> List-unsubscribe: <mailto:gopher-request@complete.org?Subject=unsubscribe> List-software: Ecartis version 1.0.0 List-ID: Gopher <gopher.complete.org> X-List-ID: Gopher <gopher.complete.org> List-subscribe: <mailto:gopher-request@complete.org?Subject=subscribe> List-owner: <mailto:jgoerzen@complete.org> List-post: <mailto:gopher@complete.org> List-archive: <http://www.complete.org/mailinglists/archives/> X-list: gopher

On 20 Mar, David Allen wrote:

[snip] > When making protocol changes, I think this question is important: > "what is gopher to you?" What should gopher be able to do? What > areas should it not mess with? Which parts of Gopher+ were good, and > which were just lousy ideas?

If anything, I'd like to keep Gopher mostly as-is, but fix some of the deficiencies with better ideas that have come along since the original...

+ I'd like a well-defined way to send descriptive strings - i.e. the 'info', only defined as such. What I'm trying to say is that using info seems 'kludgey' to me and I'd like a better way to say "Welcome to my Gopherhole!".

+ A page title would be nice too - I think that this would be extremely helpful when bookmarking.

+ Fully qualified URLs for links. Rather than breaking it up across tabs, I would much rather see ...\tgopher://foo.foo/1:8080 - I think that it's easier to maintain and much more readable.

+ And I think that the Google-ization of the Web has shown that helpful searching is the 'killer app'. With that in mind, meta information about a page, like the Keywords and Descriptions available if the robot would want it. (Clients don't really care, do they?)

+ What sort of character support is out there? The 'net is fa-a-ar more international than it was back in the day - I think we need more than UTF-8 (or whatever)

What I *don't* want to see:

- The ability for the Client to send (much) information back. Sorry, I know that this is a popular thing with people. This sort of thing raises the complexity immediately for both the clients and server. This breaks the 'dumb' client, smart server idea that was mentioned in the Gopher specs way back when. It's also opens the door for many things that I think are wrong with the web - cookies, tracking, etc. If you want state data, go to the web.

- Formatting information. I'd support a simple left|center|right alignment for the text strings (see above), but outside of that we'd be setting ourself up for the HTML/CSS/Flash wars that are raging right now. (This includes fonts)

That's all I can think of now. How about some name ideas - since we're treading on a new spec that's a break from the old one, how about "Gopher?" ;^) "Gopher2" would be a good one also. ("Gopher!", to drive home the point...)

Adam

-- Adam Gurno adam@gurno.com GPG Key: http://gurno.com/adam/adam.txt

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