Linkification in Gopher clients (Part 2) – OK, I am just stupid 🥴🔗
So the TL;DR of my previous post was:
- Gopher clients present content as plain text files that might contain URLs
- Gopher clients should extract these URLs and make further navigation easier
(The rest is just about justifying why this is not a bad thing).
Linkification in Gopher clients
The (minor) problem with my post
I have since realised an issue with my 'new' idea. It started with the first reply I got from Luke Emmet, the author of GemiNaut (a Gemini and Gopher client).
My client GemiNaut does its best to link up URLs it finds within the content, particularly at the end of the file, which seems to be the convention. It will even go as far as making the square bracket citations (e.g. "[1]") clickable, if these are used by the author.
Following that I was (today) playing with Solderpunk's VF-1 Gopher client again. To remind myself of how it works, I typed "help". Then… I suddenly noticed the "links" command.
Let's see what that does shall we?
VF-1> help links Extract URLs from most recently visited item.
(I tried it out to be certain and sure enough it works precisely as I argued it should.)
In short succession I have realised that at least two clients already do what I was arguing they should do. Maybe the problem is not with Gopher clients but rather with me… for not researching more thoroughly first. 😆
But perhaps not terrible advice
That said, if you do use a client that doesn't provide any easy way to navigate links in plain text, I suggest you try one that does. And if you are the author of a client that doesn't do this, read my original post for why I think you should add support.
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/gemlog/