[gopher] Re: pygopherd & ASK

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 09:44:43PM +0300, Alexey Vyskubov wrote:
> I'm sorry if I'm asking a stupid questions, but I was not able to find an
> answer myself.
> 
> 1. I wonder if it is possible to use ASK with pygopherd. If it is possible
> can someone give me an example of creating menu item with ASK and using
> entered information afterwards?

Yes and no.  PyGopherd is capable of presenting ASK blocks to a client, but
is not capable of processing the results itself (the Gopher+ handler does
not support datablocks coming in from the client.)

This was never really an issue because only one client has ever supported
them, and that is UMN gopher, so they are not terribly versatile.

If you want that support, it would not be too hard to add.

> 2. Why if I set up VIEWS in pyg module for an entry I see this view
> duplicated in gopher client?

Can you post your PYG code for me to take a look at?  Can I assume you are
using UMN gopher as the client?  (All the other protocols will ignore +VIEWS
since they do not support them.)

As a matter of fact, I wrote all that code so long ago I'll have to go back
and double-check it.

> 3. Is it possible to use few views for an item?

PyGopherd does support +VIEWS.  It will return a view selection to your Pyg
as the searchrequest (protocol.searchrequest).

PyGopherd does *NOT* support automatically generating multiple views based
on the contents of a directory and selecting the appropriate file when the
request comes in.  But then, I removed this from UMN gopherd some time back
too, since it is really broken and has lots of side-effects.

In short, PyGopherd provides you with the framework and tools to support
+VIEWS in PYG modules you write, but does not ship with any modules that use
them.

> P.S. I tried to patch pygopherd to add '?' after port instead of '+' if
> entry.gopherpsupport is 2; and then in pyg module using
> entry.setea('ASK',...). I managed to get my question on screen in my
> gopher client but afterwards I get an empty screen. It seems that
> 'write' method of entry is called, but I see nothing I write there on
> screen (it works if I'm not using ASK form).

I didn't follow this paragraph, could you be a little more precise?  (Which
file were you patching, etc.)