💾 Archived View for rfmpie.smol.pub › praise-for-elpher captured on 2023-07-22 at 16:17:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I've had the pleasure of using the Elpher client[1][2] for Gemini and Gopher recently, and I want to sing a few of its praises.
First, it's in Emacs. If you're an Emacs user, this makes Elpher a no-brainer. If you're not, it makes Elpher a non-starter. I happen to be in the former camp, so, onward!
Second, Elpher works seamlessly across both Gemini and Gopher. (Props to Bombadillo[3] and the other clients that offer this.) This makes Gemini and Gopher feel like two neighborhoods in the same town instead of worlds apart. I love not having to choose one alternative to the web, but instead to travel between them and enjoy their individuality. Elpher is my ticket to ride.
Third, it resolves one of Gopher's pain points: "unclickable" links in text files. Elpher linkifies these for you. You can Tab to move through them sequentially, or hit `m` (for `elpher-jump`) to pop a menu of all the links on the page for easy navigation. There are a bunch of other keyboard shortcuts as well, which I've only started to explore. Elpher made me realize that some of my initial, negative impressions of Gopher were due to the limitations of my client rather than the protocol itself.
I've been on the fence about whether Gemini or Gopher is the best fit for me. Elpher begs the question: why not both?
https://thelambdalab.xyz/elpher/
gopher://thelambdalab.xyz/1/projects/elpher/
https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/