GOPHER 2.0 - THE PROS AND CONS OF GOPHER

I  couldn't  think  of  a better title than "Gopher 2.0" for what
follows.  I've been stewing over some thoughts about port 70  and
markup languages for a while now.

In particular, my desire to write about this resurged when I read
"Gopherspace Impressions" by FallingKnife. [0]

      "As a newcomer, my question is just...  why  wouldn't
      we  want  to  be  able  to render multiple files in a
      folder as gophermap files, leveraging the best  expe-
      riences that gopher can provide?"

Or  to put it another way: do we need to limit ourselves to plain
text (with no links) and Gophermaps  (clearly  not  intended  for
content)?



Gopher: what I like and don't like
=================================================================

I have a lot of thoughts, but to get started, I'd  just  like  to
summarize my own personal Gopher pros and cons.

What I like about Gopher:

  * Simplicity of the protocol

  * Emphasis on plain-text

  * Lack of embedded content, links in plain sight

Where Gopher falls short:

  * Hyperlinking

  * Text content with hard newlines

  * Lack of crypto



How to solve?
=================================================================

I find myself in complete agreement with Solderpunk [1][2][3]  in
terms  of  a desire for something slightly more than Gopher and a
(lot) less than the Web.

I also want to mention Auzymoto's extremely interesting post  ti-
tled "Hypertext In Gopher" which gets my brain going every time I
read it. [4]

There are at least two distinct issues at play:

1. Gopher the protocol

2. Gopher the content

I also have some really "out-there" thoughts  about  how  Gopher-
like clients could work. :-)

  [0] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/fallingknife/phlog/20190410-impressions.txt

  [1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/why-gopher-needs-crypto.txt

  [2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/more-on-gopher-and-crypto.txt

  [3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/pondering-whats-inbetween-gopher-and-the-web.txt

  [4] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/auzymoto/phlog/2018/jun/phlog0011