[gopher] Re: Gopherness

[nunojsilva@xxxxxxxxxx (Nuno J. Silva)]

JumpJet Mailbox <jumpjetinfo@xxxxxxxxx>
writes:

> --- On Sun, 8/10/08, Matthew Holevinski
> <eylusion@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> So gopher as it stands needs internationalization?
>> I'm having trouble following a lot of these emails
>> but i'm trying =3D-)
>
> Assuming that "Internationlization" is indeed a good thing.  Remember,
> Morse Code is "International", but the character set has NOT been
> extended to accomodate non-US alphabets.  So, why not insist that
> Gopher TEXT documents (Gopher Item Type 0) ONLY be written using ASCII
> characters.

And what about using 0 for plain text documents?

> If someone desires to use other characters (including "made up ones"),
> they can type them into a document format that supports the characters
> (.RTF, .DOC, and etceteras), or even a PDF file.  As a last resort,
> they can even offer the document as a picture file (.GIF, .JPG, and
> etceteras).  Keeping Item Type 0 "pure" (and I am only talking about
> Item Type 0) will forever allow communication compatability with ALL
> computers, of any era.

That would be the same thing as using a web-page with lots of banners,
flash menus, colorful text, etc., instead of a plain simple text
document, just because it is *not* ASCII.

I doubt anyone is going to use some document type which needs conversion
to be displayed in the terminal, or that is proprietary. And the usage
of such formats 'just because' the text is not just ASCII goes against
the simplicity of the gopher world.

Why not just use the same format as the one used with ASCII? There's
nothing paranormal about it. Text documents are just sequencies of bits,
in groups of 8. Then, there's the encoding.

Plain text documents aren't supposed to be just ASCII.

Converting text to picture is the worst thing which can be done. If the
idea is moving towards that way, we're better off staying with the
actual world wide web - at least there are only a couple webdesigners
who find cute to use pictures to show all the content of a website.

If it is needed, we can also change the standard for 0 to be ASCII only,
and then assign other gophertype to utf8.

> It is my understanding that the Only reason for the recent push
> towards "Internationalization" on the Internet is to accomodate
> "pretty" WEB pages and Email messages (so the Browser/Mail
> software can render a webpage/email, billboard-like, on screen in a
> native language; rather than just offering the document as a separate
> download).  In fact, it has gotten so bad (with "table" formatting and
> all) that very often you can't even print out a web page (or even
> certain emails).

Actually, if what you both call internationalization is the existence
and usage of an encoding which extends ASCII, HTTP already has the
Content-Type header for a long time, so it's not 'recent'.


<snip/>

-- 
Nuno J. Silva (aka njsg)
LEIC student at Instituto Superior Técnico
Lisbon, Portugal
Homepage: http://njsg.no.sapo.pt/
Gopherspace: gopher://sdf-eu.org/11/users/njsg
Registered Linux User #402207 - http://counter.li.org

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