Solderpunk was writing about Gopher and the Web again. ¹ ² ³ And Ratfactor. ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹
Personally, I’m not too convinced. I am, however, somewhat interested in a simple text server that just serves text files.
If we then agree that the text files may contain hyperlinks, such as Markdown files, or plain text files with URLs in them, then we can write clients that retrieve these text files and allow us to request more.
So that’s what I did. I wrote a little server that serves text files. Requests are simple selectors. Like Gopher. Like Finger. Remember, finger is gopher!
I called it *Nimi Mute*, “many words.”
https://src.alexschroeder.ch/nimi-mute.git
https://github.com/kensanata/nimi-mute
As you can see in the README, you can even use `finger` or `lynx` to get text files from it! It’s all the same. `telnet` and `nc` also work, of course. 🙂
This is basically Gopher without the menus.
And since I really care about the read/write aspect of it all, I also included a way to upload files if you know the password.
And since I also care about encryption, I also showed how to encrypt it all and how to test it using `gnutls-cli`.
#Gopher #Finger #Simple Text
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
⁂
Here I am using `lynx` as the client:
(p1 of 7)
Nimi Mute
=========
This is a simple file server. It's a return to the old days of the
Internet: send a "selector" and get back some text. That's it.
It's simpler than gopher because we don't care about menus.
It's simpler than the web because we don't have request headers.
It's simpler than finger because we don't have structured information.
Examples:
perl nimi-mute.pl --port 7079 --log_level=4
echo | nc localhost 7079
echo README.md | nc localhost 7079 | mdcat
lynx gopher://localhost:7079
lynx gopher://localhost:7079/0README.md
-- press space for next page --
Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list
– Alex Schroeder 2019-06-18 09:55 UTC --- Actually, since the text server is compatible with Gopher, and since VF-1 extracts links from text files, we can already use VF-1 as a client! => https://github.com/solderpunk/VF-1 VF-1 Here’s me browsing a directory containing both `A.txt` and `B.txt` linking to each other.
Using config /home/alex/.config/.vf1rc
Welcome to VF-1!
Enjoy your flight through Gopherspace...
This is a simple file that links to B.
gopher://localhost:7079/0B.txt
VF-1> links
[1] gopher://localhost:7079/0B.txt
VF-1> 1
This is a simple file that links to A.
gopher://localhost:7079/0A.txt
VF-1>
– Alex Schroeder 2019-06-18 10:14 UTC --- Now, there currently is no way to upload a binary file. That would require a little bit of extra work because we need to indicate the number of bytes we intend to send. At the same time, however, if you already have a binary file up there, say `screenshot.jpg`, and link to it using a gopher link for binary files, e.g. `gopher://localhost:7079/9screenshot.jpg`, then it will simply work. Your gopher client can download the file, no problem. And you can download it directly, too:
$ echo screenshot.jpg | nc localhost 7079 > test.jpg
$ diff -s screenshot.jpg test.jpg
Files screenshot.jpg and test.jpg are identical
👍 – Alex Schroeder 2019-06-18 10:36 UTC --- @solderpunk said on Mastodon: => https://tilde.zone/users/solderpunk @solderpunk > This could basically be a nice ultralight protocol all on its own! > All connections are TLS securedRequests are a UTF-8 encoded selector and a CLRF, nothing moreResponses are guaranteed UTF-8 encoded textNo further structure of response is guaranteedClients should be able to extract any URLs from anywhere in the text and construct a menu, with interface of their own choosing. And I’d add “Uploads using SOH, STX, and ETX.” 😅 – Alex Schroeder 2019-06-18 20:13 UTC --- I wrote a little web client: *Soweli Lukin* available from the same repo. See 2019-06-19 A Simple Text Client for more. I’ll say, however, that system load shot to over 30 when I tried it (including posting a link to Mastodon), so surely some things still need work! => https://src.alexschroeder.ch/nimi-mute.git the same repo => 2019-06-19_A_Simple_Text_Client 2019-06-19 A Simple Text Client => Image_1_for_2019-06-18_A_Simple_Text_Server.png Load I had to disable it again! 😨 (But later, I enabled it again.) (And then I had to disable it again! 😱) – Alex Schroeder 2019-06-19 15:00 UTC --- Looks like nexd by @m15o is a “simple text server” except it also adds a link syntax borrowed from Gemini! See nex for more info. => https://hg.sr.ht/~m15o/nexd nexd => https://merveilles.town/users/m15o @m15o => https://nex.nightfall.city/nex/ nex kinex is a server for the web. gelim is a client. nexy is a Gemini proxy. pynex is another nex client. => https://hg.sr.ht/~m15o/kinex kinex => https://git.sr.ht/~hedy/gelim gelim => https://hg.sr.ht/~m15o/nexy nexy => https://git.32bit.cafe/yequari/pynex/ pynex – Alex 2023-08-18 08:27 UTC