Gopher - plain text is beautiful

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machinebacon
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Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by machinebacon » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:15 pm

WTF?
The problem with modern websites in non-graphical browser is, that modern websites are not designed for plain text browsing. 125'000 years ago, our forefathers used the gopher TCP/IP protocol to communicate information. You can still access some of these servers - dating back to the Penultimate Interglacial Period - on your modern Linux machines.

Installation

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install gopher

Start

stay in your terminal, and enter:

Code: Select all

gopher gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/
you will be greeted with a beautiful main menu.

Navigation

You see that there are numbers in square brackets in front of items. You can either use the arrow keys up/down and Enter to select, or simply type in the item number you are interested in. But first, place this page in your bookmark by press the letter 'a'. You can open bookmarks by pressing 'v', later. Press Enter and get back to the server's main menu.

As next, enter '51', for example, that's the News section, then '29' for wikinews, and you might press 'a' again to add this to your bookmarks for quick access.

To change the server, press 'o' -- in the following dialog, enter "gopher.quux.org" or "z3bra.org" (no quotes) as hostname, then ^X


Configuration

Pressing 'O' (that's a cap Olivia) you can pop up the Options menu. This is like editing the ~/.gopherrc file, so you can also use your standard editor to change values - the Options menu is a bit more comfortable, as it shows you selection items.
I noticed that sometimes ^C does not cancel or bring you back one step, in this case try ^X (for Accept).

Of course you need to set your preferred viewers for different file types (if applicable) in the Display Options. The default xv to open images is gone from Debian since Potato or so, your options might be w3m-img's w3mimgdisplay library, for example, or fbi/fbv. Or you just set it to feh in X11.


Conclusion

Pure fun, IMO.
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wuxmedia
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by wuxmedia » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:29 pm

maybe the bbq should go gopher?
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machinebacon
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by machinebacon » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:34 pm

^ Where can I sign? :D
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rust collector
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by rust collector » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:36 pm

lynx does gopher too.

machinebacon
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by machinebacon » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:05 pm

...and elinks, curl, forg, and whatever browser plugins "do gopher too". See attached scrots and find out which one is designed to display gopher, and which "do gopher too".
Attachments
gopher.png
elinks.png
lynx.png
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Dr_Chroot
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by Dr_Chroot » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:29 pm

z3bra has a gopher page as well :) gopher://z3bra.org
wuxmedia wrote:maybe the bbq should go gopher?
I don't know what logistics would be involved in that... I would assume it would end up looking more like a mailing list than a forum, but idk. Definitely be worth checking out!
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machinebacon
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by machinebacon » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:45 pm

pygopherd on the server and we'd be good to go. The question is: what should be there? Some readings, HOWTOs -- no idea really :D
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wuxmedia
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by wuxmedia » Sat Jan 23, 2016 11:25 am

^ yeah, again the forum does most of the 'heavy lifting' but readme's howto's secret files? Won't be bothered by google, the original dark web :)
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simgin
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by simgin » Sat Jan 23, 2016 11:42 am

Oh my goodness, I remember gopfer.
I feel like a modern day dinosaur now :o
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Theo
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Re: Gopher - plain text is beautiful

Unread post by Theo » Mon Jan 25, 2016 10:57 pm

Gopher, sure I remember it :) I liked the non-bullshit thing, but MB you scared me... is the next distro in UUEncoded? :P

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