[gopher] Re: PyGopherd 2.0 released; Gopher and WAP

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2003 at 02:46:12PM -0500, Brian wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 03:15:47PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> > Additionally, there is the debut of a major new feature: the WAP protocol.
> 
> So do you all think this could be the niche that will bring gopher
> back to popularity again?

I'm not sure, but it sure would be nice.  It occured to me after I got a
phone that supports WAP -- and I thought it would be really neat to see.  It
turns out to work very nicely.  The fact that Gopher keeps everything
simple, and has a well-defined metadata set, means that it turns have a new
niche that I don't think anyone saw coming: as a base for other layers on
top of it.

While we're on the subject, I should describe what I've been experimenting
on with PyGopherd lately.

I currently have my Gopher site at quux.org, and my Web site at
complete.org.  The Web site runs under Zope, which I have been attempting to
get rid of for ages.  Plus, I'd like for more of its content to be available
under Gopher, while still having a nice look for Web visitors. (Nicer than
PyGopherd currently generates).

Putting more of it under Gopher would provide some other benefits, too: such
as a nice hierarchical organization for free, plus WAP access for free.

So I decided that I would experiment with adding a TAL (aka ZPT or Zope Page
Templates) handler to PyGopherd.  It turns out that this approach is
amazingly powerful.  We may just have stumbled on a new web publishing
system by accident here :-)  I'm going to be spending some time in the next
few days experimenting with the system.

It took only 67 lines of code in a single file to implement this in
PyGopherd and can be completely disabled for those that have no need for it.

-- John