_________________________________
LAUNCHING GOPHER.BEASTIEBOY.NET
Nicolas Herry
_________________________________
2017/12/31
1 Launching gopher.beastieboy.net
=================================
As 2018 is now almost upon us, I decided I would celebrate the
new year by making a quick jump backwards, in a time where
Internet was a very different thing.
2 Down the gopher hole
======================
In 1991, [The Gopher protocol] was invented, and suddenly, there
was a easy way for everyone connected to the net to share
information. The website [Tedium] has [an excellent piece] on the
rise and fall of this protocol, and also covers modern usage of
it. Modern usage? Yes, it turns out the gopher is still around
and used by some, thanks to the dedication of [Cameron
Kaiser]. He is the main driving force behind [The Overbite
Project], which brings gopher clients to almost all kinds of
modern web browsers, in addition to a very handy [Web-to-gopher
proxy] everyone can use to connect to a gopher server, without
needing to install anything. He is also the maintainer of
[Veronica2], the search engine for the gopher space.
[The Gopher protocol]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29>
[Tedium] <http://tedium.co>
[an excellent piece]
<https://tedium.co/2017/06/22/modern-day-gopher-history/>
[Cameron Kaiser] <http://www.floodgap.com/>
[The Overbite Project] <http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/>
[Web-to-gopher proxy] <http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/>
[Veronica2]
<http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher.floodgap.com/1/v2>
3 Why bother?
=============
Gopher takes a different approach to information sharing as that
of the web: where the web doesn't enforce any structure, gopher
requires the documents be exposed hierarchically. There are
directories, and inside directories are more directories or
documents. What might seem like a constraint is actually a relief
to both the contents provider and the reader, who can focus
solely on the material itself. Sure, it can be done on the web
(this is in part my excuse for such a simple website), but even
so the inherent complexity of modern day HTML means that time has
to be spent tailoring CSS settings for mobile devices, large
screen displays, laptops of various shapes and sizes... This
diverts the attention from the content and requires that one
develops a bit of expertise on these topics. In other words, this
can lead to a ton of yak shaving, enough to stock up on yak fiber
to sustain the yak wool pillow industry for the next century.
4 Take back the web
===================
Moreover, lacking any form of CSS means that nothing is imposed
to the reader. There is a crucial difference in intention between
sharing by transfering ownership of the knowledge, and selling
the knowledge to the recipient. Where the web pushes you to the
latter, where you are expected to convey your corporate image
through a selection of (half-broken) tools for typesetting
(fonts, positioning, etc.), gopher enables the former by
insisting on nothing. The presentation is entirely in the hands
of the client. Is the structure presented in a page or as menus
in the client application itself? Do you have icons for the
various file types? Which font is used, and which size, colour?
Some plugins for modern web browsers exist that try to transfer
some control to the reader over the pages he accesses, but the
experience is actually very limited and, most of the time,
doesn't work very well: there's always a section of the site that
would refuse to adapt to the reader's taste. After all, this is
what e-readers have been promising for years: go beyond the
physical book and provide means to the reader to change the font,
the spacing and the overall layout of the pages.
5 What now?
===========
Since yesterday evening, you can access the contents of this site
as a gopher hole, at the address
gopher://gopher.beastieboy.net:70. You can use one of the clients
offered by the Overbite Project or others:
- [OverbiteWX for recent builds of Firefox (>56)]
- [OverbiteFF for older, Gecko-based builds of Firefox and
Seamonkey]
- [Burrow: Gopherspace Explorer for Chrome]
- [The Gopher client for Windows]
- [Overbite for Android for, well, Android]
- [Gopher Client for iOS]
- [gopher.el for emacs]
- [Lynx, for all Unixy systems, (Free)DOS, Windows and, IIRC,
BeOS/Haiku][1]
Funnily enough, Gopher Client for iOS requires iOS 11, which
means my iPhone 5s, unable to ever run this OS, is not moder
enough to allow me to connect to Gopherspace. I personally use
OverbiteWX for Firefox, gopher.el for emacs (excellent client!)
and the Floodgap proxy the rest of the time.
On the server, I run [geomyidae] over an ascii version of this
site, generated by org-mode in emacs. As expected, the site
renders better on mobile devices through gopher than as HTML
pages, as I need to work on the CSS for that. This means that I
need to devote a weekend to go though the usual sequence of
finding and stealing a good one of which I can understand 20% of
the code, tweaking and testing on my phone (which requires me to
either upload the CSS to the server after every change or set up
a local web server on my computer and change the firewall rules),
settling on a layout I'm not too unsatisfied with, posting a
message here announcing my victory over the terrors of the modern
web, receiving millions of emails from angry readers informing me
how broken the layout is on every other phone available on the
market, picking up a book on modern CSS and quietly abandonning
the projet after I have reached page 22 of 578.
Well, I think I will just keep writing, generate basic HTML and
text files and not mind the rest. It's winter, yaks are cold too;
they should be allowed to keep their coat of hair.
[OverbiteWX for recent builds of Firefox (>56)]
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/overbitewx/>
[OverbiteFF for older, Gecko-based builds of Firefox and Seamonkey]
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/overbiteff/>
[Burrow: Gopherspace Explorer for Chrome]
<https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/burrow-gopherspace-explor/plhaaggiajlcjclagmjnjmaonhkdhhji>
[The Gopher client for Windows]
<http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/gopher-browser-for-windows/>
[Overbite for Android for, well, Android]
<http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/d?android>
[Gopher Client for iOS]
<http://appshopper.com/utilities/gopher-client>
[gopher.el for emacs] <https://github.com/ardekantur/gopher.el>
[Lynx, for all Unixy systems, (Free)DOS, Windows and, IIRC,
BeOS/Haiku] <http://lynx.invisible-island.net/>
[geomyidae] <http://git.r-36.net/geomyidae/>
Footnotes
_________
[1] In the first version of this article, I shamefully forgot to
include Lynx on that list. Luckily, [@dotemacs]
(<https://mastodon.xyz/@dotemacs>) was quick to point out my
mistake...