h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So were allowed to post URI’s on a trial basis, this got me thinking – is it only webspace we are allowed to link to or can we link to other parts of the Internet?

By way of a trial here is a link to gopherspace, it is a totally inoffensive index page.

gopher://gopher.quux.org:70

So the big question is will it be parsed as a URI & if not why not?

So why wasn’t it parsed as a link

Because nobody uses gopher any more? Just guessing. We don't expand mailto links or ftp links either.

They are still out there - the site I posted the link to (quux.org) is a regularly maintained, modern gopher server.

This is blatant discrimination against gopher’s

Well, you know, nobody mails anymore either!

Gopher might be over 10 years old but its still a viable way of distributing & obtaining information over the Internet. On January 8 THIS year ‘Internet Gopher Server and Client version 3.0’ was released to celebrate 10 years of Gophers, this was the first new release in five years & came a year after the University of Minnesota placed the code under the GNU General Public License.

Unlike ‘mailto ://’ & ‘ftp ://’ URI's, ‘gopher ://’ URI's link directly to sites (and thus information) that are viewable straight away (or at least the same speed as ‘http ://’ sites). There should be no problem from the moderation point of view as all the popular modern browsers (MSIE, NS, Opera) support gopher so why not parse gopherhuh>

You might want to go & visit http://quux.org/hurg/hurg?selector=/Software/Gopher&host=quux.org&port=70&username=The+Gopher+Project&type=1&cannedspiel=1 to gain information on modern gopherspace.

Now one more question, would a gopher link be parsed properly in a GuideML entry, say from a tag

They would work in a LINK tag, just not in forum postings, because we have to decide what to link, and we don't treat gopher:// as a linkable thing. Sorry. http killed gopher, that's the way it is, and it's only the nostalgic or the wilfully retro who keep it going. You might as well ask how you can link to a particular prestel page.

I don't believe that browsers render Prestel pages (although I do believe there are archive sites out there where you can access them by telnet)? As gopher pages are information pages (IF it is decided to continue allowing the posting of links) they should be parsed (or failing that at least NOT moderated out so people can copy & paste them). Gopher is alive & Kicking & out there.

One final point in favor of allowing gopher links is that most gopher servers are to governmental or research/educational sites, meaning that gopher sites can be more informative than Web sites on the same kinds of topics.

:: wanders off to write article on gopherspace ::

Dose not work

Its a Conspiracy I tried to link to the http version of the page & that will not parse either :-( ____________ Site linked to http://quux.org/hurg/hurg?selector=0%2FSoftware%2FGopher%2Fwhygopher%2Fgopher-manifesto.txt&port=70&type=0&host=gopher.quux.org&username=Gopher+Manifesto Code used The gopher:// manifesto Error message The gopher:// manifesto I'm also going to post this over at bug feedback :-/

See my reply here:

F48000?thread=166597?thread=&post=1737748#p1737748

thanks, but that dosnt answer Post 9?

It's not treating gopher:// as a protocol, so that's more of a feature than a bug (similar to us not making a link in forums) . Don't know if it will be fixed, for reasons described above. There are many other more important bugs on the list, I'm afraid.

That's OK, it's just you said that it would work in a link tag so I wanted to check I was doing nothing wrong - I can still link to gopher sites via a http gateway

I know the old rule about kicking a dead thread, but I just had to make a note about HappyDude®'s categorization of URIs. mailto is indeed different, but ftp is related to http and even closer to gopher, as all three of these access resources, while mailto is closer to javascript (used as a protocol), that is, more of a command than an resource specification. telnet is even different, as it connects to a server but specifies no particular resource on it.

Also, I can't access gopherspace with Opera without a proxy (or so it says). I assume that this is wrong, but perhaps the Mac version just doesn't support it. Humph.

-Spike A., glad he still has his copy of TurboGopher

I'm accessing gopherspace on opera

although I had the same problem for wais://.. wiv opera (not a problen I just used a proxy)