Initial guideline for publishing - gopher-tutorials - The gopher tutorials project.
HTML git clone git://bitreich.org/gopher-tutorials/ git://enlrupgkhuxnvlhsf6lc3fziv5h2hhfrinws65d7roiv6bfj7d652fid.onion/gopher-tutorials/
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DIR commit 389858fe316692d3f34db820c55a547157356d8f
DIR parent 385a02079d7706da0700db3a53dcd83005db032d
HTML Author: Christian Kellermann <ckeen@pestilenz.org>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 22:24:21 +0200
Initial guideline for publishing
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lohmann <20h@r-36.net>
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+This document will give you a few hints about publishing through
+gopher.
+
+Line length
+===========
+
+The rendering of content is client specific. However most clients
+will present the user with a text based interface, so you should be
+conservative on the maximum line length in your menus. As clients
+will add a couple of characters to mark item types, a line width of
+69 characters is recommended.
+
+The menu
+========
+
+The main entry point and user interface between your readers and your
+content is the gopher menu item (item '1' as you may recall). The
+selectors in a menu will define the information hierarchy. Choose a
+flat hierarchy if you can so readers will get to the content easily
+and without traversing too many menus.
+
+Use helpful item descriptions for your selectors, this will aid both
+human and nonhuman readers: indexers will most likely index menu
+items only. Be as specific as possible. If it is a binary item type
+hint at its intended format, so your readers will know what to
+expect. Using a useful filename scheme for selectors is also helpful.
+
+You may decorate your menus with informational items (item 'i').
+Clients will display them as is without additional tags. Around the
+gopherspace a lot of ASCII art is used to create a pleasant
+appearance of a gopher site. Some services also include explanations
+for the specific menu, and use 'i' items for grouping selectors.
+
+There are clients that do not offer a 'back' button. Be kind to those
+users and provide navigational selectors in your menus. Make the
+journey through your gopher space easy!
+
+On your travels through gopher sites, you will encounter gopher sites
+that use menu and informational items to mimick a page with embedded
+links. There is an ongoing dispute whether this is good style. We do
+not recommend this style as it delutes the meaning of the menu item.
+For starters you should stick to single file items to store your
+content. Once you gain more experience with publishing content in
+gopher you can always change your mind later!
+
+Selector hierarchy
+==================
+
+By design a gopher site should present a hierarchy of content
+selectors to the user. These mimick a file system by intention.
+However this does not need to mtch the real hierarchy of your storage
+filesystem. An example:
+
+Alicia has a gopher blog (aka 'phlog'). She writes daily posts. To
+make it easy on her users she has a menu item on the phlog/ selector
+that presents the latest 5 posts and a selector to an archive menu
+linking to all her posts. On disk however both the menus and the
+articles reside in the same directory. A script creates the
+selectors in the menu files and rotates them. The post files however
+remain untouched and their selectors will not change over time. This
+means that external links to her post will still be valid later.
+
+Site generators
+===============
+
+The easiest creation of content is done manually. If you would like
+to automate some task then there are site generators. Most of these
+consists of a collection of shell scripts you can adapt to your
+needs. Search veronica for cl-yag or burrow for starters.