[gopher] Towards Gopher 3.0

[Denis Bernard]

  I am the guy who spoke about abuse of “i” item-type in gophermap files. I am
sorry of the reactions that I have involuntary produced. A funny thing: I had
published a utility for phlogging at Sourceforge in December 2010 that includes
the “i” item-type! See at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nb2gopher/
http://nb2gopher.sourceforge.net/
  An other thing: English  is not my mother tong (I am French), be indulgent! 

  What I want to tell to you: do not rush! Yes, everyone that loves Gopher
agrees the fact that Gopher protocols need to be reviewed. But this is a huge
task and taking fast decisions could bring disorders in the future.

  What we have to day:
1 – a protocol directly defined in RFC-1436, in short: Gopher-1.0
2 – a protocol indirectly defined in RFC-4266 (known as Gopher+), in short:
Gopher-2.0
3 – a Mime type: gopher

  What we (gopher lovers) use to day: mostly Gopher-1.0, not Gopher-2.0 . It is
a pity to forget the improvement that Gopher+ brings. There are many things
useful in Gopher+, like votes. Do day, most of websites use votes (“I like it!”).

  What I suggest:
1- to write a book for beginners in collaborative way (could be a wiki book at:
http://en.wikibooks.org/) in English language. This book could tell about
history of Gopher and, deeply, about the two protocols (Gopher and Gopher+).
Doing that will make things clearer for us and will made existing gopher users
and gopher software authors REALLY skilled in these protocols.
2 – to establish a list of existing clients and servers and their level of
compliance of each Gopher protocols.
3 – creating a site (gopher and web) that will centralize informations about the
key softwares (like clients, crawlers, servers, phonebooks...) related to Gopher
protocols and documentations.

  After the preliminaries, some persons will appear competent enough to speak
about existing Gopher protocols.  These persons will be able to thing about a
new third gopher protocol (Gopher-3.0) and should create a working group. 

  Because of my language and because I am not deeply involved in Gopher to day,
I am not candidate as a leader for these tasks.

Now, it is up to you to think about all of that!

Denis Bernard
http://oceamer.com/
gopher://oceamer.com/1/