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Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

gopher.floodgap.com

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Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#21

Post by foota »

pointfree wrote: post #9
foota wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, while writing a web browser would be significant work, it would likely be on the same order as writing an operating functional enough for people to actually want to use it. Porting a browser would likely take less work even (while still being a significant amount of work). This page talks about what it takes to port webkit to another platform: http://blog.cranksoftware.com/webkit-porting-tips-the-good-t..…

Sure you could port webkit to your new OS, but if all the software you use effectively exists only as web apps what would be the point?

I think I understand your argument now. Why do you think browsers as de factor operating systems is wrong? Their programming interface is highly standardized across implementations.

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#22

Post by rimliu »

pnathan wrote: post #13
pointfree wrote: post #5

The web is like an operating system that you are locked into using. This prevents alternative operating systems such as Plan 9 from ever becoming useful, because building a web browser is such a monumental effort. Even if a decent web browser were built for Plan 9 it would defeat the purpose of using such an alternative OS because the web binds software to content. The web has effectively killed innovation in operati…

The web is a bad reinvention of distributed RPCs on desktop systems, imo.

You mean web apps? Because the web itself was fine till everyone started thinking that anything on the web must be an application. And that web must "win" mobile for some reason.

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#24

Post by rhabarba »

stonogo wrote: post #18
foota wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, while writing a web browser would be significant work, it would likely be on the same order as writing an operating functional enough for people to actually want to use it. Porting a browser would likely take less work even (while still being a significant amount of work). This page talks about what it takes to port webkit to another platform: http://blog.cranksoftware.com/webkit-porting-tips-the-good-t..…

Forgive me, but you should more specifically define the terms you use. As it stands, it looks like by "functional enough for people to actually want to use it" you seem to introduce a circular dependency -- as though an OS is useless unless it's easy to port a browser to it. The GP post mentiones Plan 9, which is a great example here. There are real people who use Plan 9 every day (I have met some of them!) but Webki…

Don't forget that browsers like Netsurf might well be enough for your daily surfing.

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#25

Post by rhabarba »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #15
pointfree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author didn't say "popular" he said "relevant" The current state of software development has huge issues with needless complexity resulting from poorly chosen abstractions. Gopher and IRC make it possible to use any client of your choosing, thus keeping innovation and improvements accessible to anyone with an idea.

> Gopher and IRC make it possible to use any client of your choosing, thus keeping innovation and improvements accessible to anyone with an idea. I agree to the former and disagree to the latter---they are not correlated. In fact, IRC has demonstrated that it might be hard to adapt to new requirements without breaking many things (no matter it's an existing client, a community or a requirement itself). Today the rele…

The new(ish) IRCv3 standard does not break compatibility with existing clients though. If they don't support all of its features, they just have less things displayed.

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#26

Post by 7373737373 »

pointfree wrote: post #5

The web is like an operating system that you are locked into using. This prevents alternative operating systems such as Plan 9 from ever becoming useful, because building a web browser is such a monumental effort. Even if a decent web browser were built for Plan 9 it would defeat the purpose of using such an alternative OS because the web binds software to content. The web has effectively killed innovation in operati…

Web desktops may be the next step. As much as people are joking about running Javascript on metal, the idea of running a universally accepted virtual machine (WebAssembly?) and building a high level language and operating system on top of it seems to have some merit. See also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)

http://urbit.org/docs/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_desktop

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#28

Post by adrianN »

foota wrote: post #7
pointfree wrote: post #5

The web is like an operating system that you are locked into using. This prevents alternative operating systems such as Plan 9 from ever becoming useful, because building a web browser is such a monumental effort. Even if a decent web browser were built for Plan 9 it would defeat the purpose of using such an alternative OS because the web binds software to content. The web has effectively killed innovation in operati…

I disagree, while writing a web browser would be significant work, it would likely be on the same order as writing an operating functional enough for people to actually want to use it. Porting a browser would likely take less work even (while still being a significant amount of work). This page talks about what it takes to port webkit to another platform: http://blog.cranksoftware.com/webkit-porting-tips-the-good-t..…

I'm no expert, but I believe the difficulty in writing an OS lies with the myriad of different hardware configurations you have to support. Writing drivers for poorly documented hardware is difficult. You don't get around that complexity by writing a browser. That's just an additional effort you have to make.

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#29

Post by robin_reala »

rev_null wrote: post #16
robin_reala wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by friendly you mean ‘irrelevant’. There’s plenty of easy things that developers can do to their sites to make them more accessible that don’t require rewriting them as a gopher site.

Yes. There are things that developers could do to make most web sites better for the visually impaired. But that doesn't mean that most web developers use, or even recognize, these best practices. Gopher, on the other hand, simply only supports textual navigation that is easy to feed to a text-to-speech engine. The developer doesn't need to even think about these issues.

Right, but text-to-speech is only half of the problem. Gopher by default just uses plain text with no semantics. Without marking up those documents there’s no way to let users jump around within them. Do you honestly expect a visually impaired user to sit and wait while each document they go to is read out to them in its entirety with no heading structure or ability to navigate within the content?

Re: Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

#30

Post by rhabarba »

pnathan wrote: post #13
pointfree wrote: post #5

The web is like an operating system that you are locked into using. This prevents alternative operating systems such as Plan 9 from ever becoming useful, because building a web browser is such a monumental effort. Even if a decent web browser were built for Plan 9 it would defeat the purpose of using such an alternative OS because the web binds software to content. The web has effectively killed innovation in operati…

The web is a bad reinvention of distributed RPCs on desktop systems, imo.

The web is a broken and incomplete adaption of Xanadu.
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