[gopher] Re: Heads up

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Allen <mda@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> - What does gopher *not* do that you wish it did?  (Keeping in mind
>   that gopher is gopher, and HTTP is HTTP, so please don't say, "some
>   cookie type of ability would be nice...")

What I'd like to see most is Konqueror gopher support debugged -- or
some other filemanager implement konqueror-like support.  Konq is,
AFAICT, the first interface to gopher that really shows it like it
should be -- as a global filesystem.  You can drag-and-drop, view
gopherspace as a tree (just as you would your local filesystem), etc.
The idea is awesome.  The implementation, unfortunately, it highly
buggy.

> What I'm most worried about with regards to gopher is it simply
> disappearing for lack of recruiting users.  Without recruiting users,
> I think gopher will eventually perish due to simple attrition.
> (i.e. growth is required to maintain the size of the userbase)  So
> what I'm trying to get at is what needs to be done to attract people?

More visibility.  This week's announcement has brought in interest
from all over.  We've received a lot of bug reports and suggestions.

I think that we need to have all the other gopher projects visible as
well.  Put up a page on freshmeat or something.  Make announcements of
releases here and in comp.infosystems.gopher.  

Remember: there is still a large VMS community :-)

-- John