@julienxx had posted that we should try `finger feed@typed-hole.org`. I chuckled.
@solderpunk talked about bringing finger back.
He wrote:
Finger is a very simple TCP protocol assigned well-known port 79. The gist of it is that you connect to a remote host, send a username followed by CRLF, and the remote host sends you back some information about that user and closes the connection. It’s gopher-like in its simplicity.
OK, now I was curious. I thought about it some more. Then...
Whaaaaat! Finger uses *exactly the same format* as Gopher!
So now... if I hook up my gopher server to port 79... uhhm...
All of this should work:
finger alex@alexschroeder.ch finger About@alexschroeder.ch finger Contact@alexschroeder.ch finger do/journal@alexschroeder.ch finger 2019-01-09_Finger_is_Gopher@alexschroeder.ch
Ahhhh... the Zen of the old Internet! 🙂
Sadly, UTF-8 turns out to be broken.
Again: Ahhhh... the Zen of the old Internet! 😭
#Gopher #Finger
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
⁂
Looks like the problem is the finger(1) client, as nc(1) just works:
$ echo do/journal | nc alexschroeder.ch 79 | tail -n 8 | head -n 5 Ahhhh... the Zen of the old Internet! 🙂 Sadly, UTF-8 turns out to be broken. Again: Ahhhh... the Zen of the old Internet! 😭 $
Nice!
– Adam 2019-01-10 20:04 UTC
---
Wow, very cool!
– Alex Schroeder 2019-01-10 20:09 UTC
---
It’s part of the RFC to not support UTF-8:
“3.3. Client security
It is expected that there will normally be some client program that the user runs to query the initial RUIP. By default, this program SHOULD filter any unprintable data, leaving only printable 7-bit characters (ASCII 32 through ASCII 126), tabs (ASCII 9), and CRLFs.”
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1288
So your comment is spot on; old internet indeed 😉
– Adam 2019-01-10 20:13 UTC
---
Ouch!
– Alex Schroeder 2019-01-11 00:06 UTC
---
Just adapt the “unprintable data” part to modern standards and you are allowed to keep UTF-8 as long as your client knows how to print it.
– Anonymous 2020-07-03 00:35 UTC