[gopher] Which itemtype for video (vote)?

[Damien Carol]

Maybe 'V' will be more relevant. Same way as g for gif, p for png and I for
image. Uppercase means generic.

BUT I don't think add a new item type will be good to clarify things.

For me, the simple '9' Binary fit well.

semicolon: 2
vee: 1
VEE : 1
(don't bother and use nine: 3)

2012/5/20 Kacper Gutowski <mwgamera at gmail.com>

> On 2012-05-19 16:56:28, Jeff W wrote:
> > Nick Matavka <n.theodore.matavka.files at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Gentlemen and ladies:
> > > It has come to my attention that the choice of item-type for video is
> > > somewhat controversial.  The existing, but somewhat awkward, choice is
> > > ';' (semicolon), which is my own preference, but there are some who
> > > have floated the idea of it being changed to 'v' (lowercase vee).  The
> > > sole reason I prefer the semicolon is that it is the (unofficially)
> > > established standard.  If the selector were changed, admins would have
> > > to update their sites to accomplish the change, and some Gopher sites
> > > are... shall we say... updated once in a bit over a millennium.
> > > Furthermore, clients would have to be reprogrammed to accept the 'v'
> > > selector as video.
> > >
> > > vee: 0
> > > semicolon: 1
> >
> > Simple votes:
> >
> > "v" for video: 1
> > vague control character-looking semi-colon: 0
> >
> > Alternately, I'm fine with lumping all the binaries under "9"
> >
> > Civic duty - done.
>
> I'd prefer using '9' for video because, well, these are binary files.
> If you need to know whether it's a video of something else you can guess
> it either by selector (extension) as RFC 1436 suggests or using some
> magic numbers.  If you want to play it, you'll have to do it anyway.
>
> RFC 1436 states that "Characters '0' through 'Z' are reserved.  Local
> experiments should use other characters." Character ';' happens to fall
> in the '0'-'Z' range (at least in ASCII) which was probably an error in
> the first place.  But while I'm not sure what body is in power to make
> use of reserved characters, I think that once consensus is reached that
> the type is indeed needed, it should get "standardised" in some way and
> get one of the characters that were reserved for this purpose.
>
> If we really need separate type for video and we want to standardise it,
> I'd highly recommend using already common and widespread ';' because
> it's already in the reserved range so client getting ';' can not even
> safely assume it's some invalid experimental stuff, it's a type it really
> should know about.
>
> For now, we have a lot of guesswork on client side.  I think that the
> most common and widespread non-standard types like 'h', 'i', or ';'
> should get adopted as de-facto standard.  But adding another character
> like 'v' to the mess won't make things any better.
>
> The fact that ';' is "vague control-character-looking" is a weak
> argument as item type was never meant to be shown to end-users and
> numbers for standard types aren't more informative anyway.
>
> semicolon: 2
> vee: 1
> (don't bother and use nine: 2)
>
>
> K.
>
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-- 
Damien CAROL
gopher://dams.zapto.org/1/
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