Re: new gopher software

Hello,

I got some feedback, but offlist in private mails.
So I want to send clarifications and updates here.

Someone asked me, where "akfgb" is. It is not a separate package, but all 
the programs I mentioned are part of "AKFNetz".

gopher://privat.akfoerster.de/1/soft/akfnetz/
https://akfoerster.de/p/akfnetz/

Unfortunately otherwise I got no feedback on that program, but only about 
the web interface (gopherweb). Some really liked it and had questions.

https://akfoerster.de/cgi-bin/gopher

One user always typed his favourite start page into the URL-bar. He did not 
realise, that he just could bookmark it like any other webpage. For "akfgb" 
you can set the environment variable GOPHER_HOME.

"The Free Thinker" pointed me to a problem with his interface "GophHub".
I could fix it, but that GophHub is really a challenge. Other Gopher 
clients have problems with it, too.
Meanwhile I've also fixed some other bugs.

I didn't support Type '+' correctly. The specification is hard to 
understand. But then I followed the interpretation of James Tomasino.

gopher://gopher.black/1/explorations/redundanttype

It should work now in gopherweb as well as in akfgb.
I think that type is actually very useful, but not all clients support it,
so you cannot rely on it. :-(

Gopherweb assumes the charset UTF-8; akfgb depends on the terminal setting, 
and UTF-8 works fine.

By the way, a hidden feature in gopherweb is that the URL-bar also accepts 
web-addresses. Then you get what you asked for, but not through the proxy.
For printing the URL-bar is hidden and text is black on white.
The proxy makes good use of the browsers cache (Cache-Control).

You can install gopherweb.cgi on your own webserver on localhost or your 
local network. Then it doesn't cost me my money.

Important Note: If you write your own web interface, don't you forget to 
exclude robots! Or else search engines will crawl the whole gopherspace 
through your proxy.

I consider a web-interface not to be the best solution, although it is very 
convenient. But the good thing about Gopher is, that you do not need a full 
blown browser. That is why I also wrote "akfgb".


For those who understand German, please visit
gopher://privat.akfoerster.de

-- 
AKFoerster