[gopher] A Gopher noob and endless questions. ;-)

[Cameron Kaiser]

Mike,

> > Nice. I'll add your site to the new gophers list, and V-2 will seed  
> > off of that. What would you like the display string to be?
> 
> The Terminal Core is good.  (That's a FLCL reference for any anime  
> fans out there.)

You could make a second one called Terminal Dogma and get the NGE ones too.
;-)

> > +ASK could handle the form, but the server would still have to enforce
> > the security. I suppose you could have a mole as a front end, but I  
> > would have to think about the potential gaps in that. Or, you could use  
> > itemtype 7, though this is a little more opaque.
> 
> So let me ask you this then - does the +ASK form have the ability to  
> populate a text file?  If so then I just thought of something.
> 
> You could have a daemon running in the background that checks the text  
> file for name:passwd then fires up a server session on a particular  
> port.  The gophermap behind the ask form would have custom links for  
> each user.  The links would only then be active if someone has logged  
> in via the +ASK form.  Put a logoff +ASK form in the user gopherspace  
> and give the daemon a timeout ability to kill the special server  
> session and the user gopherspace would then only be available when  
> someone was properly logged in.
> 
> It's a kludge and it doesn't provide password security but it would  
> work in theory.  (Provided I don't have the capabilities of +
> ASK wrong in my head - I'm still very fuzzy on a lot of Gopher stuff.)

+ASK just describes a form, analogous to HTML <form>. You still have to have
something on the other end listening. I am pretty sure pygopherd will allow
a mole to receive +ASK arguments (bucktooth doesn't, but that's because I
don't support gopher+ yet). Your mole could stick something in that file,
but it would be better just to have the mole do the firewall gyrations or
what have you.

> > And, of course, Gopher over TLS or
> > SSL has been proposed but not ever, to my knowledge, implemented.
> 
> I'm not really looking for secure Gopher but TLS/SSL would indeed rock.

Adding that to the round tuit list :)

-- 
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  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Predestination was doomed from the start. ----------------------------------