Gopherpedia

[RS Wood]

Introducing: gopherpedia: everything you expect from wikipedia,
provided in plain text over the gopher protocol.

The developer, Colin Mitchell of MuffinLabs, announced the project last
yere, here:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.network.gopher.general/4628

At
http://muffinlabs.com/2013/06/14/gopherpedia---the-free-encyclopedia-via-gopher/
he writes:
"14 June 2013

My last release for Project Dump week is Gopherpedia -- a mirror of
Wikipedia in gopherspace. If you happen to have a gopher client, you
can see it at gopherpedia.com on port 70. Otherwise, you can browse to
gopherpedia.com and view it via a web proxy.

A couple of years ago, I landed on the idea of a gopher interface to
Wikipedia. Originally it was probably a joke, but it stuck with me. So
one day I registered a domain name and got to work. The first thing I
needed to do was build a gopher server, because none of the currently
available options were up to the task. So I built Gopher2000. Then, I
quickly realized that the current gopher proxies weren't any good
either, so I built GoPHPer. Once both of those were written (well over
a year ago), it didn't seem like there was much left to be done --
gopherpedia should've been ready to launch.

But I hadn't reckoned on the challenges of churning through a database
dump of Wikipedia..."

It's an interesting read and an interesting project. I've used it a
couple times since then (the Lynx browser still speaks the gopher
protocol). At a minimum, it provides for easy wikipedia searching from
the command line without need to pull up a GUI browser, if you're into
that sort of thing.

[2phar]

Doesn't seem to be providing any directory when trying access it from
gopher on port 70

[RS Wood]

On 2014-03-12, 2phar <no...@example.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/2014 11:22 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>> Introducing: gopherpedia: everything you expect from wikipedia,
>> provided in plain text over the gopher protocol.

> Doesn't seem to be providing any directory when trying access it from
> gopher on port 70

I just tried it and it works for me. Firewall issue?
% lynx gopher://gopherpedia.com

Comes right up. Faster than Wikipedia too, I might add. I don't know
of any other clients other than lynx. Even the "links" or w3m browser
doesn't speak gopher anymore.

[Randy Westlund]

elinks does. That's what I use, and it's working for me.

I had only heard of the gopher protocol before, but never played
around with it. I think this is really useful. With gopherfs, you
can actually mount a gopher server as a FUSE resource! How awesome
is that?

[RS Wood]

On 2014-03-12, Randy Westlund <Vorz...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> elinks does. That's what I use, and it's working for me.
>
> I had only heard of the gopher protocol before, but never played
> around with it. I think this is really useful. With gopherfs, you
> can actually mount a gopher server as a FUSE resource! How awesome is
> that?

How do you use gopherfs? I don't really 'get' FUSE.

Just thought of an additional benefit: Google doesn't index gopher
sites, considering them dead. Might be good for a little personal
repository of something. Just thinking outloud, here.

[Scott Alfter]

In article <bobkkg...@mid.individual.net>,

RS Wood <r...@therandymon.com> wrote:
>I just tried it and it works for me. Firewall issue?
>% lynx gopher://gopherpedia.com
>
>Comes right up. Faster than Wikipedia too, I might add. I don't know
>of any other clients other than lynx. Even the "links" or w3m browser
>doesn't speak gopher anymore.

OverbiteFF adds Gopher support to Firefox.

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

[Randy Westlund]

On 2014-03-12, RS Wood wrote:

> On 2014-03-12, Randy Westlund <Vorz...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> elinks does. That's what I use, and it's working for me.
>>
>> I had only heard of the gopher protocol before, but never played
>> around with it. I think this is really useful. With gopherfs, you
>> can actually mount a gopher server as a FUSE resource! How awesome is
>> that?
>
> How do you use gopherfs? I don't really 'get' FUSE.

I'm not sure. There isn't a good website for it, and it isn't in
the gentoo package tree. But I imagine it would work like sshfs
does. I can say:
#v+
sshfs server.example.com:/home/randy/files /mnt/files
#v-

And it's mounted as if it were local. It's really handy for
situations where you have (for example) a raspberry pi taped to your
stereo system running MPD, and the music files stored on your server
in the next room :)

http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

Doing this with gopherpedia would be cool. You could perhaps have
/mnt/gopherpedia mounted, and have your own scripts browse it and do
whatever you like.

> Just thought of an additional benefit: Google doesn't index gopher
> sites, considering them dead. Might be good for a little personal
> repository of something. Just thinking outloud, here.

Interesting, I didn't realize that. From what I've seen so far,
gopher seems like it's worth keeping alive.

[Bob Eager]

I used the text gopher client.



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[Randy Westlund]

On 2014-03-12, Lewis wrote:
> In message <lfqb82$b4s$1...@dont-email.me>
> I've been waiting a minute for a response to a search. It says it is
> fetching 1.4K and is getting 13Bps.

Same here. An hour ago, I was getting all search results in under
three seconds. Now it's taking a minute or two.

[Whiskers]

On 2014-03-12, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:42:40 +0000, RS Wood wrote:
>
>> On 2014-03-12, 2phar <no...@example.com> wrote:
>>> On 3/12/2014 11:22 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>>>> Introducing: gopherpedia: everything you expect from wikipedia,
>>>> provided in plain text over the gopher protocol.
>>
>>> Doesn't seem to be providing any directory when trying access it
>>> from gopher on port 70
>>
>>
>> I just tried it and it works for me. Firewall issue? % lynx
>> gopher://gopherpedia.com
>>
>> Comes right up. Faster than Wikipedia too, I might add. I don't
>> know of any other clients other than lynx. Even the "links" or w3m
>> browser doesn't speak gopher anymore.
>
> I used the text gopher client.

I can't install that at present:

,---- [ ]
| Unable to load page
|
| Problem occurred while loading the URL http://gopher.quux.org:70/give-me-gopher/
|
| Cannot connect to destination (gopher.quux.org)
`----

Perhaps it's overloaded by people seeking Gopher clients? I have used
Gopher in the past.

Lynx works pretty well, and integrates Gopher well with the web.
"ddwarf" is another possibility but I haven't tried it
<http://www.viste-family.net/mateusz/software/ddwarf/>.

Shell accounts are still available, eg <http://shells.red-pill.eu/>, and
provide users with gopher space (and usenet access and other stuff).
<http://sdf.org/> is probably the oldest - older than the web :))

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Christopher M. Hobbs]

On 12 Mar 2014 21:32:48 GMT

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:42:40 +0000, RS Wood wrote:
>
> > On 2014-03-12, 2phar <no...@example.com> wrote:
> >> On 3/12/2014 11:22 AM, RS Wood wrote:
> >>> Introducing: gopherpedia: everything you expect from wikipedia,
> >>> provided in plain text over the gopher protocol.
> >
> >> Doesn't seem to be providing any directory when trying access it
> >> from gopher on port 70
> >
> >
> > I just tried it and it works for me. Firewall issue?
> > % lynx gopher://gopherpedia.com
> >
> > Comes right up. Faster than Wikipedia too, I might add. I don't
> > know of any other clients other than lynx. Even the "links" or w3m
> > browser doesn't speak gopher anymore.
>
> I used the text gopher client.
>
>
>

I initially had this issue as well because I typed 'gopher
gopherpedia.com'. I believe the text gopher client speaks more
protocols than just gopher. Adding "gopher://" to the front of the
domain works: 'gopher gopher://gopherpedia.com'

Phew, that's a lot of gopher...

cmh

[RS Wood]

I see from an earlier thread in comp.infosystems.gopher that
gopher://qix.me is online. That would be another interesting site to
point yer gopher at. Seems silly that the gopher client requires you to
specify the protocol, but maybe they had plans for expansion back in the
day ...

[Don Kuenz]

RS Wood <r...@therandymon.com> wrote:
> On 2014-03-12, 2phar <no...@example.com> wrote:
>> On 3/12/2014 11:22 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>>> Introducing: gopherpedia: everything you expect from wikipedia,
>>> provided in plain text over the gopher protocol.
>
>> Doesn't seem to be providing any directory when trying access it from
>> gopher on port 70
>
>
> I just tried it and it works for me. Firewall issue?
> % lynx gopher://gopherpedia.com

lynx works for me too. This is sweet. Thank you.

--

Don Kuenz

[2phar]

On 3/16/2014 12:30 AM, Christopher M. Hobbs wrote:

>
> I initially had this issue as well because I typed 'gopher
> gopherpedia.com'. I believe the text gopher client speaks more
> protocols than just gopher. Adding "gopher://" to the front of the
> domain works: 'gopher gopher://gopherpedia.com'
>
> Phew, that's a lot of gopher...
>
> cmh
>

Yup that's what it was.. odd though, it works with some other gopher
sites with just a hostname.

[Conceited Jerk]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2014 19:06:42 +0000 (UTC), Randy Westlund belched forth:

>
> I had only heard of the gopher protocol before, but never played
> around with it. I think this is really useful. With gopherfs, you
> can actually mount a gopher server as a FUSE resource! How awesome
> is that?

I only started using FUSE recently, to back up my SDF stuff to my Linux
box. I didn't know it could do gopher, this is fantastic news!


--
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