2024-03-16               BLOG - GOPHER - ELPHER


Copies of my blog posts are available as Gopher posts. Here is how.

Why?
====

Because it is simple.

Apart from the text itself, Gopher comes with is very little
distraction. If only all professional systems could be like that.

Thanks, Matto[0], for the encouragement.


Install Gophernicus
===================

For serving gopher, we use Gophernicus[1]. It's available on Debian, so
installing it is, like:

,----
| apt install gophernicus
`----

Configuring
===========

The Debian packagers explain they expect gopher files to be in
/srv/gopher. That needs to be created.

,----
| mkdir /srv/gopher/
`----

Add content
===========

Put some basic content, such as the sample gophermap.

,----
| cp /usr/share/doc/gophernicus/examples/gophermap.sample /srv/gopher/gophermap
`----

Then, spend a weekend writing Emacs Lisp utilities to export and
re-format all Org-mode blogs to Ascii.

Converters
==========

The biggest challenge are image links and hyperlinks.

You need to turn text like this:

  ,----
  | Here is some text with a hyperlink [Example 123456].
  `----

  into a footnote, in two steps:

  ,----
  | Here is some text with a hyperlink Example 1234561[1].
  `----

  With, at the end of the ASCII export text, replacing this:

  ,----
  | [Example 123456]: 
  |https://example.org/cgi-bin/report.cgi?=123456
  `----

  by:
  ,----
  | [1]: : https://example.org/cgi-bin/report.cgi?=123456
  `----

Use Elpher
==========

Emacs has a Gopher client, Elpher, which you can install from Elpa/Melpa
easily:

,----
| M-x package-install RET elpher RET 
`----

and run it:

,----
| M-x elpher
`----

use 'g' to visit your new gopher site:

elpher.jpg[2]

[0]: gopher://box.matto.nl

[1]: http://www.gophernicus.org/

[2] gopher://gopher.hillenius.net/I/images/elpher.jpg