💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › s › Lagrange-Issues › 73 captured on 2024-09-29 at 02:40:13. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-08-18)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've noticed there's no support for gopher over TLS, so I think it's a good idea to make a issue here for it to be supported.
I've been told it's just the same protocol with a layer of TLS on top.
🐞 Issue #73 in s/Lagrange-Issues
Mar 02 · 7 months ago
The problem with Gopher over TLS is that the gopher menu format does not indicate if you should use TLS or not for a connection. A server can support both TLS and non-TLS, so a client that does not support TLS can still connect, but nevertheless if you want to use TLS, it would be helpful to specify the use of TLS. One way to work around this problem is to specify the use of TLS in the DNS record.
The advatange of Gopher over TLS is that virtual hosting is possible.
🕹️ skyjake [mod...] · Sep 09 at 04:01:
So, is there any sort of specification for Gopher-over-TLS? I don't really fancy writing support for anything that doesn't have a spec, even an informal one...
As far as I know, the specification is nothing more than "Gopher-over-TLS", and that the URI scheme is "gophers:" instead of "gopher:". (I may be wrong, but that is all that it is as far as I am aware of. Anyone that knows otherwise should mention it.)
TLS and non-TLS can use the same port since the client sends first and it is unlikely that 0x16 is the first byte of any selector string.
As I mentioned, there are advantages and disadvantages. There are a few ways around the disadvantages (e.g. DNS, manual configuration by users, the server checking for TLS and changing the menus to work, etc), but in my opinion they won't be very good either.