[gopher] [revisit] Gopher server-side programming

["Nicholas Cull" <njcull@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

This is a question that first appeared here around a year ago: has anyone,
or is anyone looking at writing a Gopher server in Java, with Java Servlet
support?

From what I've read in the archives, the idea was thrown around for a while,
but all development effort seems to have been spent on keeping the UMN
gopherd server ticking over. My reasons for investigating a Java
Servlet-based approach are:

1. A Java-based server would (in theory) be more portable. As far as I've
worked out, the UMN server still is Unix-only? Ok, Hurd as well, but not
Windows, etc.
2. The Servlet spec is supposedly designed generically enough to support
protocols other than just HTTP. Gopher would be the most obvious protocol to
test this theory with. (The other one would be FTP, but bleugh, the whole
stateful nature of FTP would make this ugly.) Are Servlets really
appropriate, at least in their current form? If there's an active
development push for GopherServlets, we may be able to influence future
Servlet specifications, by pointing out any design flaws or considerations
that result from a Gopher implementation.
3. We may be able to base any new code on the Apache Tomcat server
architecture, while also being able to look at the UMN gopherd server
implementation for any implementation issues that arise.
4. Well, it's just cool, ok :P

I'm curious to know any thoughts from the mailing list. At this point, I'm
not ready to commit myself to do any active development in this area, since
I'm currently tied up with two open source projects already. If anyone has
already given the idea some serious thought, I'd be interested in your
opinions.

Thanks,

Nicholas.
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