
After fifteen years of downtime, the MetaFilter gopher server is back - ohjeez
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/24019/Direct-your-gopher-client-to-gopher-gophermetafiltercom?utm_content=bufferaa556&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
davb
I'd love to go back to the days where I didn't have to endure the 20+ external
scripts (mostly ads, analytics, social and "optimization") that some crappy
dev has crammed into their markup, just to read an article or browse a store.

Maybe we need a content oriented alternative to the web browser.

Maybe a modern Gopher.

Display preferences are handled by the client. Sure, support video and audio.
Support tables. But keep it minimal. Put all the scripting on the server side,
as it should be. Lock down the specification - do everything to stop it
becoming web browser 2.0.

Then we wouldn't need junk like AMP.

Maybe it would take off well in some nice to start with.

~~~
stuartaxelowen
Core problem is that creators of value want to be paid for it. The delivery
medium doesn't change that.

~~~
marssaxman
Much value is created by people who don't want to be bothered with payment
because they are motivated by the social capital accruing from contribution to
a community. Trying to pay for such gifts actually drives these contributors
away, by devaluing their efforts - as though they were only doing it for the
money. There is labor you literally cannot buy.

~~~
bovermyer
That class of people is not as large as you might think it is.

~~~
marssaxman
There's a strong selection bias, of course, given that I have structured my
social life around communities of people who value community. Still, my
impression is that it's less about wanting to be paid for creative work and
more about _needing_ to be paid for it, else they can't afford the time to do
it. If we had a basic income system, I suspect you'd see a lot more work done
for community benefit, without the overhead and distraction of payment.

------
mintplant
I'd really love (and have toyed around with) a modern reimagining of Gopher,
targeted toward mobile devices and maybe e-readers, and with a focus on
accessibility. Just the content, please, and as quick as you can get it on my
screen. I'll pick the styling options that make it easiest for me to read.

~~~
theoh
That sentiment brings me back to the old days of unix geeks writing structural
html with no concern for appearance.

The separation of structure and formatting is not practical for serious media
of any kind. You can't separate form and content. Nor would most people want
to, because (visual and other) complexity is an inevitable and rewarding part
of human experience...

~~~
mintplant
Instapaper? Reader View? RSS readers? Ebooks? Separation of form from content
is both practical and commonplace.

Your blog post may be beautifully styled, but that makes no difference if I
can't even load it, or the fonts are so thin I have to squint to try to read,
or the glaring white background makes me see floaters. A blind person doesn't
care about the whizz-bang of $framework if your JS-only site breaks their
screen reader.

~~~
iamphilrae
Likewise I read all Hacker News links and comments over an iPhone HN app.
Absolutely don't miss the form at all except in the cases where the source
HTML is not semantic and so the reader mucks it up. But that's an issue with
structure relying on form.

------
vmorgulis
It works :-)

[http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?a=gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher...](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?a=gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher.metafilter.com)

A post from Cameron Kaiser explaining some features of gopher:

[http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html](http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html)

Something lightweight like gopher and markdown is enough for a lot of people.

~~~
dsp1234
From the relevance link:

"by divorcing interface from information, Gopher sites stand and shine on the
strength of their content and not the glitz of their bling."

Forcing content creators to focus on the strength of their content is pretty
much a non-starter for most modern commercial enterprises. Which is why it's
amazingly useful, but likely futile.

~~~
codemac
The departure of the modern web from text that has links -> full heterogeneous
application suites that run in an elaborate VM has been wonderful for users of
desktop applications, in that they no longer need to maintain several stacks
of software, but just their browser.

However - those who enjoyed text + links were left behind. I really just
wanted text with some links. Thinking about setting up my own websites as a
gopher site, just don't know the best ways to proxy it back to HTTP best.

I think pocket, instapaper, readability etc were all essentially peeks into a
style of web we could have had where content presentation was something a user
has decent control over.

~~~
xjay
There's Lynx--the text web-browser. [1]

Someone wrote up their experience using Lynx on the web around 2012. [2]
Conclusion: "Not all the sites are usable with Lynx, but many of them offer at
least basic functionality using the text-only web browser."

As long as there's HTML output, a more humane web browser could allow better
customization of the information; it could infer the usual human
organizational methods; lists, metrics, groupings, buttons, etc, and present
it with your favorite background color, font size, line-length, image size,
videos, etc, based on the hierarchical structure. The other camp is web apps,
which is a different use case.

[1] [http://lynx.invisible-island.net/](http://lynx.invisible-island.net/)

[2] [http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/06/25/using-web-browser-
lynx-v...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/06/25/using-web-browser-lynx-visit-
top-websites/)

~~~
nordsieck
IMO, elinks[1] does a much better job of rendering web content in a terminal.
Google actually looks pretty good, and gmail is not too bad either.

[1] [http://elinks.or.cz/](http://elinks.or.cz/)

~~~
PeCaN
Has elinks development stopped? I vastly preferred it to lynx, but it seems
unmaintained now.

~~~
nordsieck
Looks like there's limited activity still ongoing.

[http://repo.or.cz/w/elinks.git](http://repo.or.cz/w/elinks.git)

------
pasbesoin
Hmm, I was just thinking about a return to gopher, in the past couple of
years. Guess I wasn't the only one.

I've also been thinking about NNTP. Usenet never went away, entirely, but
maybe it will be having a little renaissance, as well. Old-school distributed,
independent networking. And again, where content rules over graphic design.

P.S. That second part is NOT a poke at MetaFilter, which I rather like --
although, I guess I've been away from it for a while, now.

But, I'm interested in communities that are orthogonal to any one particular
platform, or perhaps I should say, host. Among other things.

~~~
petercooper
_Usenet never went away, entirely, but maybe it will be having a little
renaissance, as well._

It sorta came back as Reddit. I was a huge Usenet junkie from the first time I
saw it, but it eventually turned into 99% binaries and junk. All the
interesting discussions in the areas I was involved in went to sites like HN,
Metafilter, Reddit, Web-based forums, etc.

~~~
digi_owl
And IRC came back as Slack.

It seems like we are going through a period where everything that used to be
its own protocol is now recreated using HTTP and JSON.

Hell, it may well be that the web browser has become the new X server.

~~~
tyfon
IRC is still heavily in use in open source development and gaming circles. You
can even use it to implement things like Twitch.tv chat. The great thing with
open protocols is that everyone can write clients and servers for them.

I've never used Slack but their front page alone is enough for me to turn
away. The first two words I see is "Product" and "Pricing". Nothing on the
page hints to an open protocol so I guess it is proprietary.

~~~
nandhp
I've never used Slack, so I have no idea why people would use it instead of
IRC, but they do have IRC and XMPP gateways available:
[https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/201727913-Connectin...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/201727913-Connecting-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP)

------
pnathan
A Seattle Council candidate was running a gopher site last year. It is
_incredible_. It feels like the road that should have been evolved upon,
rather than HTML.

Ah well. I should turn my own site into gopher!

~~~
peatmoss
That might have been my bad :-) I'm still paying Digital Ocean $5/mo for its
hosting AND REGRET NOTHING. Alon was a really great sport for letting me put
it up. We even put an Easter egg up where anyone who read the open invitation
on the gopher site would be treated to free drinks at a post Reddit AMA party.
Sadly, we had few takers. Oh well, we and some nerdy friends poured a few out.

I really hope Alon will run again at some point so I can jump back into
action.

------
tekklloneer
I'm a volunteer for The MADE, and as part of our preservation efforts, we
maintain a (simplistic) gopher server (thanks to pyGopher). It's pretty neat
bringing a computer old enough to drive back to life, getting an IP address,
and downloading our logo via gopher.

http interface: [http://themade.org:70/](http://themade.org:70/) (there's a
proper gopher server as well, of course)

Gopherspace ain't dead!

------
brudgers
Gopher was the coolest thing on the internet when I first came online with the
advice of _The Whole Internet Catalog_ [1]. Eventually, I found Project
Gutenberg and gopher became the second coolest thing.

[1]: a printed book!

~~~
threeio
I have my copy of the Whole Internet Catalog here with me at all times. You
never know when you may want to reminisce about The Well.

------
voltagex_
[https://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc1436](https://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc1436)

They may not quite suit the modern world very well, but I like protocols that
I can use via telnet/nc

    
    
       nc gopher.metafilter.com 70
       <hit enter>

------
bryanlarsen
It's just the navigation that's been converted. Even though metafilter pages
are almost all just text + links, they haven't been converted from HTML. So
you still need a web browser.

~~~
vmorgulis
I'm not sure but I think floodgap.com can convert the web pages to text with
elinks or w3m.

~~~
keithpeter
lynx can render gopher pages itself as well as being able to render the <html>
format content linked to lower levels of the MetaFilter site mentioned in OA.

Below is an 'ascii screenshot'

    
    
                                                                           Gopher Menu
                                        Gopher Menu
    
    
    
                __  __      _        _____ _ _ _
               |  \/  | ___| |_ __ _|  ___(_) | |_ ___ _ __
               | |\/| |/ _ \ __/ _` | |_  | | | __/ _ \ '__|
               | |  | |  __/ || (_| |  _| | | | ||  __/ |
               |_|  |_|\___|\__\__,_|_|   |_|_|\__\___|_|
    
         (DIR) MetaFilter
               sharing and discussing neat stuff on the web
         (DIR) Ask MetaFilter
               asking questions and getting answers
         (DIR) FanFare
               pop culture discussion -- TV, movies, podcast, books
         (DIR) Projects
               creative work by MetaFilter community members
         (DIR) Music
               original musical and audio recordings by MeFites
         (DIR) Jobs
               employment opportunities and member availabilities
         (DIR) IRL
               organizing meetups and community events in real life
         (DIR) MetaTalk
               where the commuity talks about MetaFilter itself
         (DIR) FAQ
               frequently asked questions
    
    
        Commands: Use arrow keys to move, '?' for help, 'q' to quit, '<-' to go back.
          Arrow keys: Up and Down to move.  Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
         H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list
    

Back in mid 90s I was dialling into a GreenNet shell account and running lynx
to surf gopher and http content seamlessly, all for the price of a phone call
to a London number.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Sure, but lynx is a web browser. If you use a real gopher client, clicking on
any of those links will open into a browser rather than in the gopher client.

~~~
keithpeter
Yes, for the real retro experience, people might want to try a _graphical_
gopher client, complete with the little folder icons. Lynx just happened to
already be installed.

------
bcg1
Next up on HN... "GOfurr, a gopher client written in Go" ;)

~~~
fennecfoxen
I'm actually halfway done implementing a gopher library in Node.js. I think it
works, but I haven't really tested it yet (was going to build an actual client
and try to use it, so I can see how well it works and how well the interfaces
work in practice). Have at it, if you want:

[https://github.com/twhaples/gopher-
client](https://github.com/twhaples/gopher-client)

Not that I believe it'll really be useful for anything. :b

My real plan is to write a web-to-gopher gateway that actually looks nice
(because the existing ones look like they're from 1995) and then use it to
host my homepage / blog / CV before my next job search (in London!) for the
retro-hilarity factor.

------
TorKlingberg
Gopher was already a historical curiosity fifteen years ago. So this is a
nostalgic recreation of a retro project.

On an other note, I think I remember web browsers used to support gopher
natively. I wonder when it was removed from the last major browser.

~~~
dangoor
It was removed from Firefox in Firefox 4:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388195](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388195)

~~~
joedrew
And it was me who did it!

~~~
NamTaf
Why are you limiting my functionality in 2016!!! You mean I have to download
an ADDON to make this work?

I'm submitting a bug report right now.

~~~
paulddraper
At least you don't have to download an add-on to use Pocket ;)

------
NelsonMinar
In the discussion Paul Bausch (the site coder) notes they are using PyGopherd

[http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd](http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd)

[https://github.com/jgoerzen/pygopherd](https://github.com/jgoerzen/pygopherd)

------
thought_alarm
It's so fast!!

Now, if only there was a way to browse Reddit and HN using 'tin' or 'nn'.

~~~
voltagex_
I have too many projects, one that I shelved was "Reddit-as-a-filesystem",
because I was messing around with Dokany [1] at the time.

The same kind of thinking (Reddit->FUSE->Files) could be applied to a Reddit
-> Gopher proxy. To reduce the cost of the project, I'd make it self-host the
Gopher server on the user's PC and make the API calls from there, rather than
setting up gopher-hackernews.xyz:70

My gut feeling is that the slowest part of this would be the API call to HN
[2] or Reddit [3].

[2]: [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

[3]: [https://www.reddit.com/dev/api](https://www.reddit.com/dev/api)

[1]: [https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany](https://github.com/dokan-
dev/dokany)

~~~
mbrock
Instead of using API calls for user navigation, you can keep a synchronized
local mirror of whatever subreddits the user is interested in.

I have a repository somewhere with a thing that does that, through Reddit's
.json URLs, mirroring subreddits into Git repositories full of JSON files, and
then serving a minimal local web interface with real time updates. I'll make a
note to clean it up and publish it...

~~~
voltagex_
That's a very clever idea.

I've been playing with FreeBSD's ports system this afternoon. There's
something to be said for using the filesystem instead of a database, API calls
or whatever.

------
look_lookatme
FWIW OmniWeb supports gopher:

[http://i.imgur.com/KFEzrTP.png](http://i.imgur.com/KFEzrTP.png)

[https://www.omnigroup.com/more](https://www.omnigroup.com/more)

------
cmurf
How do people read HN comments on their phone? On Android, neither Firefox nor
Chrome seem to do this correctly. Each line of text scrolls off to the right,
there is no reformatting to the screen. So I zoom in to a readable size, and
now half the text is not visible off the right so I have to navigate right to
read then left then right then left. It's terrible. Why is this so awful?

~~~
rinze
I just use the
[https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb](https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb)
url. It formats the whole thing pretty nicely.

------
jessamyn
<3

------
the_mitsuhiko
Why are people so obsessed with Gopher? The protocol is abysmal.

~~~
jjawssd
Explain

~~~
ksherlock
There's an RFC that goes over it but basically, you open a connection, send a
pathname, and then the server responds with the file, which is basically the
original HTTP spec (without the GET/DELETE/etc verbs).

Oh, but it also differentiates between text and binary files. Binary files are
sent as-is, text files are sent line by line with a \r\n terminator. .\r\n
indicates the end of file. Leading .s must therefore be doubled. And then
directories are sent in another format (type/name, path, hostname, port -- tab
separated).

Which means the client has to know before hand if it's a text or binary file
or directory. How does it know that? Well, there's a 1-character code at the
start of the filename which gives the filetype. 0 is a file, 1 is a directory,
9 is a binary file. There are also other filetypes which will make you
reminisce about the 80s (Unencoded file, BinHexed file, n3270 session, etc.

HTTP (once headers and mime types were added) is a better protocol. Maybe
people pine for the days when you didn't need 2 megabytes of javascript to
punch the monkey, but that's not due the underlying transport protocol.

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt)

~~~
digi_owl
Sounds like in this day and age you can tag everything as either 0 or 9, and
leave it to the client to figure it all out.

The whole text vs binary reminds me of FTP, and most clients there defaults to
requesting everything as binary transfers.

Edit: MIME is no cure-all, i wonder how many times i have seen Firefox get
royally confused because the MIME type is wrong.

~~~
ksherlock
Even if you limit it to text/binary 0/9 you still have problems.

1\. your url looks like gopher://dipstick.io/0file or
gopher://watchingpaintdry.museum/9folder/file. The filetype is part of the
url, but only the client is aware of it -- it's not passed to the server.

2\. When using a URL, the client has one idea of the file type but it does not
necessarily match what the server thinks the file type is.

2\. Error messages. HTTP has a status code to indicate the file doesn't exist
(or was moved, etc). Gopher can send the error message back as the payload
but... is that in text format or binary format? The server has no idea what
format the client expects.

Always sending binary data and using out-of-band status codes and file type
just keeps life simpler.

------
runn1ng
I guess MetaFilter kind of misses the point of gopher here, since they just
serve HTML document on the gopher server, with <a href> links to normal web.

Example:

[http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://gopher.metafil...](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://gopher.metafilter.com:70/0/MetaFilter/The-
leg-exercises-are-pivoting-curtsy-lunges.html)

What is the point of serving that on gopher? :)

------
taftster
Gopher is the ultimate separation of content from presentation. You write the
content, I'll read it in the style of my choosing.

Flashy ads and social network dropins need to go away. A good content author
can figure out how to work sponsorships and other revenue generation into
their work. I don't mind reading through someone's text based plug for a
product, it creates a stronger focus on writing quality content rather than
link-baiting.

------
btreesOfSpring
i waiting for someone to kick up archie.

------
digi_owl
Gopher really does feel like it would be a match made in heaven for Freenet or
some kind of Bittorrent FS.

------
dscpls
I say gopher it!

------
collinmanderson
But is the connection encrypted? :)

