[gopher] Selector types summary

Cameron Kaiser spectre at floodgap.com
Tue Mar 8 13:57:37 UTC 2011


> just a summary of the selectors I know:

Don't you mean item types? </pedantic>

> Selectors seen in the wild:
> h - hypertext link

or more accurately "HTML"

> i - informational item (text)
> 
> Some questions regarding them:
> 
> What is this CSO protocol? I can't find any specification of it.
> Can someone point me at a still running server?

CSO is the same as the old ph. OverbiteFF supports it; this gopher URL
talks to a working server at uic.edu:105, queries it for "sachs" and
displays both (current) matches:

	gopher://ns.uic.edu:105/2query%20sachs%20return%20all

If you do

	gopher://ns.uic.edu:105/2

then you will get a requester box. Of course, the itemtype rewriting
code in 2.1.1554 does this wrong and offers to rewrite it to item type 1;
I will fix this. Just click cancel and the requester will appear.

> 4, 5, 6 and 9 seem to be redundant for binary files? The only
> difference is, that some old clients may be interested in such
> metadata.

Yes. It does point to different handlers for older clients, but pretty
much everything now just treats them as binary lumps.

> g and I are redundant for image files?

I'd argue this one. While I is supposed to be "generic image," that requires
the client to content-sniff. Mozilla's docshell did do this, but OverbiteFF
for technical reasons cannot, so it looks at the extension of the file. This
is usually good enough but I don't like it. See 'p' below.

> How is the + type supposed to work? The balancing server is send-
> ing out a menu with all the redundant servers first and then the
> client decides where to connect?

I believe so, but I've never made or actually used such an implementation.

> 8 and T are redundant for interactive sessions? I would propose
> a selector type for SSH: 's'.

s is used intermittently for "generic sound." Other de-facto item types I
have encountered include p (PNG), d (PDF), x (XML) and c (CSS). OverbiteFF
currently supports all of these.

-- 
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman -



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