Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 01:13:27 -0500
From: David Allen <s2mdalle@titan.vcu.edu>
To: gopher@complete.org
Subject: [gopher] Re: Gopher for GNOME...
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On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 01:02:03AM +0100, Stefan Rieken wrote:
> 
> On 05 Jan 2001 13:40:19 -0500, David Allen wrote:
> 
> > It just seems to me that at that point you might be
> > moving towards a browser in development, and if that's the case, why
> > not just use a browser?
> 
> Nautilus _is_ a browser. That is, you can view stuff in all different
> formats including HTML, and enter URLs (define "browser" :-). That is
> the missing link you are looking for, I guess.

Oh.  Yeah, that's it.  :)  I did not know that Nautilus is a browser.
Are they using any pre-existing code, or are they starting from
scratch?  There's mozilla, there's konqueror, and there's other
components of free software browsers to be had, it'd be a shame if
they were to do everything over again.  Implementing browsers is not
for the feint of heart. 

> It would be even so simple (at least in theory), that if I provided a
> Gopher+ module for the GNOME Virtual File System, and did that well, I
> wouldn't have to worry about the presentation part at all. Given a
> directory, Nautilus would display a directory. Given an HTML file,
> Nautilus would display a HTML file.

Right.  And given a file of type FOO, the FOO interpreter/execution
mechanism would be used.

> I guess the bottomline is that the difference between browsers and
> shells is going to fade (at least if you got to believe Eazel, M$ and
> Apple, but at least you're in charge of your own computer today, if you
> don't like that kind of user experience :-). All _I_ know is that it
> will save me handling views for all these thousands of MIME types and
> other generic stuff. Thanks to Nautilus, I'd have my personnel
> implementing these parts ;-) and I can concentrate on the protocol.

Sounds pretty cool.  I don't know if I buy the fading of the
distinction, but time will tell.  Maybe eventually we'll all have
connections that are fast enough to seem that there isn't any
difference.  (*drool*)  I'm not going to say that anything *isn't*
going to happen, since the computer field tends to enjoy making fools
out of people who suggest something is impossible.  :)

> OK, that's in theory. For now, I only have this standalone app, that's
> right. And indeed, it doesn't support one darned view other than
> plaintext :-)

Well I'm sure that will change with time.  Besides, half the fun of
programming isn't using the software, but watching it grow.  Well it
is for me anyway.
-- 
David Allen
http://opop.nols.com/