bitreich.org/1/scm/tgtimes/commit/812f6bfe1baa59beec1220bf4e8a4e4db3385c61.gph

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write two articles about cost of hardware for Gopher - tgtimes - The Gopher Times
HTML git clone git://bitreich.org/tgtimes git://enlrupgkhuxnvlhsf6lc3fziv5h2hhfrinws65d7roiv6bfj7d652fid.onion/tgtimes
DIR Log
DIR Files
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DIR README
---
DIR commit 812f6bfe1baa59beec1220bf4e8a4e4db3385c61
DIR parent d9486721b97cbded94d8f48e118f9fce9493f77b
HTML Author: Josuah Demangeon <me@josuah.net>
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2023 01:52:48 +0100

write two articles about cost of hardware for Gopher

11 files changed, 290 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
---
DIR diff --git a/opus b/opus
@@ -1 +1 @@
-v=6
+v=7
DIR diff --git a/opus7/article-athas-shell-redirections.mw b/opus7/article-athas-shell-redirections.mw
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
.SH athas
Shell Redirections
-.2C 60
+.2C 30
.
.PP
Newcomers to the Unix shell quickly encounter handy tools such as
DIR diff --git a/opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-client-hardware.mw b/opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-client-hardware.mw
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-https://github.com/ptrks/AVR-ENC28J60-Examples
DIR diff --git a/opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-client.mw b/opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-client.mw
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+.SH athas
+Most minimal gopher client
+.2C 30
+.
+.PP
+Gopher is a protocol allowing browsing text, images interactively,
+reach telnet interfaces, and download any file, or open any URL,
+for custom action to be chosen by the user.
+.
+.IP "Network"
+One reliable way to fetch the content from internet would be Ethernet,
+but convenience and price would push toward using radio transmission
+such as WiFi.
+.FS
+Ethernet would require an extra transceiver chip, while wifi takes mostly
+just a wire acting as antenna, which partly explains its low cost.
+.FE
+.
+.IP "Processing"
+One inexpensive family of processors featuring a high cost-to-performance
+ratio, which also features WiFi, is the ESP32. The C3 iteration even uses
+the open-source architecture RISC-V. The speed is decent enough for
+decoding JPEG an PNG, or support TLS as used in gophers://.
+.
+.IP "Display"
+The cost of displays have dropped considerably as they invaded the market.
+Economy of scale made small color displays even cheaper than
+character-based displays.
+.
+.IP "Input"
+Browsing content is a lot about scrolling. Since we do custom hardware,
+capacitive touch buttons can be used for little to no extra cost.
+This could permit a smooth scrolling through the content.
+.FS
+Once again, mostly requiring wires, this cuts the price and explain
+their popularity.
+.FE
+.
+.IP "Text"
+Text is compact and efficient, and bitmap font requires a bit of storage
+for all the common non-ASCII characters, but ESP32 have 16MB of flash
+storage enough for the entire uncompressed Unifont:
+.LK http://unifoundry.com/unifont/
+.
+.IP "Audio"
+Producing sound does not cost much more than a small audio amplifier,
+software for decoding MP3, and a 3.5mm Jack connector.
+Very small cost added.
+.
+.IP "Extension"
+an USB interface would allow plugging the device to a computer for
+either automation or using a full keybaord.
+.
+.IP "Power"
+A small dedicated battery could be included increasing the cost,
+but getting all power from USB would also preserve the choice to
+the user, free to chose a wall charger or portable power bank.
+.
+.IP "Enclosure"
+A custom 3D printed case would allow keeping the cost very low
+even at small volume production.
+.
+.PP
+There exist boards around 5 USD which would provide all of the above
+except audio and a few wires, typically the size of an MP3 player.
+The grand total bill of material could realistically approach 10 USD.
+An actual product could eventually reach as low as 15 USD if keeping
+only a small margin for the seller, and eventually lower if produced
+on a larger scale.
+.
+.PP
+Writing the software for such a product from the ground up could take
+typically an entire week, including JPEG and PNG decoding libraries,
+image and font rendering, writing driver for all the parts involved,
+integrating the TCP/IP stack and TLS stack.
+.
+.PP
+While an XML parser able to fetch content over HTTP would be relatively
+as difficult to build, this would not permit the same level of user
+experience as the Gopher-based project: CSS and JavaScript are becoming
+an increasingly frequent requirement to access the Web, and reimplementing
+a new compatible rendering engine is not feasible to a single person.
+.
+.PP
+This requirement would in turn affect the minimal performance of the
+processing unit used: a processor in the GHz range with RAM in the
+GB range, in particular if anticipating future needs of the Web
+software system.
DIR diff --git a/opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-server.mw b/opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-server.mw
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+.SH tgtimes
+Most minimal Gopher server
+.
+.PP
+Gopher is a protocol providing a gateway to a document system, allowing
+to serve an organized hierarchy of files over the network. Dynamically
+generating the content as per user requests is also possible. The client
+side is in charge of rendering the content as it sees fit.
+.
+.PP
+Generating Gopher indexes and transmitting file contents or generated
+contents is low in software compmlexity, and in turn allows less expensive
+hardware to be run than complex web stacks.
+.
+.PP
+Which cost would we end-up for building a minimal piece of hardware able
+to host the Gopher protocol acheiving all of the above?
+The Gopher Times investigates.
+.
+.IP "Communication"
+While WiFi is inexpensive and fits moving device gracefully, the
+reliability of Ethernet is indicated for a server. Ethernet adds
+1 USD of cost for the transceiver handling the electricial characteristics
+of Ethernet. These typically expose an RGMII interface.
+.
+.IP "Processing"
+A microcontroller featuring an Ethernet peripheral (with an RGMII
+interface) could be the popular STM32F103, or an alternative
+compatible part. Enough processing power would be present for an
+embedded TCP/IP and a TLS stack.
+.
+.IP "Automation"
+In addition, most microcontrollers feature a large range of
+built-in peripheral such as timers and communication or analog
+interfaces, enabling automation of devices such as lighting,
+heating, laundry, motors, or an entire car, through external
+modules. This would come for no extra cost.
+.
+.IP "Storage"
+A slot for a MicroSD card would allow storing and updating
+the static content to serve, and storing network configuration.
+.
+.IP "Scripting"
+There exist project to fit programming languages onto microcontrollers.
+Separate projects for supporting a subset of each of Python, Ruby,
+Javscript, Go, Rust, Lua, Forth and more.
+.
+.IP "Power"
+By letting power supply happen through the USB port, a large range
+of power source can be used, such as battery, solar panels, wind
+turbine, hydropower, or power outlet.
+.
+.PP
+The bill of materials for such a design would approximate 5 USD.
+A marketed device with a small margin for the seller could reach
+as low as 10 USD.
+.
+.PP
+Interestingly, such a device would also be able to provide an
+equivalent Web service able to work with all Web client, but
+not running the existing popular Web server software stacks
+known as "Web Frameworks".
DIR diff --git a/opus7/article-tgtimes-panopticon-effect.mw b/opus7/article-tgtimes-panopticon-effect.mw
DIR diff --git a/opus7/article-tgtimes-peering-cake.mw b/opus7/article-tgtimes-peering-cake.mw
DIR diff --git a/opus7/footer.mw b/opus7/footer.mw
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+.SH you
+Publishing in The Gopher Times
+.2C 10v
+.
+.PP
+Want your article published?
+Want to announce something to the Gopher world?
+.
+.PP
+Directly related to Gopher or not,
+reach us on IRC with an article in any format,
+we will handle the rest.
+.
+.DS
+ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
+gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes/
+git://bitreich.org/tgtimes/
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+Did you notice the new layout?
+We now can jump between single and double column as it is more fit:
+Some large code chunks will not fit in a two-column layout,
+but text is more pleasant to read on two columns.
DIR diff --git a/opus7/tgtimes7.mw b/opus7/tgtimes7.mw
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+.TL
+The Gopher Times
+.AB
+Opus 7 - Gopher news and more - Jan. 2023
+.AE
+.
+.so opus7/article-athas-shell-redirections.mw
+.so opus7/article-tgtimes-10-cent-risc-v-mcu.mw
+.so opus7/article-tgtimes-a-billion-gopher.mw
+.so opus7/article-tgtimes-most-minimal-gopher-client-hardware.mw
+.so opus7/article-tgtimes-panopticon-effect.mw
+.so opus7/article-tgtimes-peering-cake.mw
+.
+.so opus6/footer.mw
DIR diff --git a/opus7/tgtimes7.pdf b/opus7/tgtimes7.pdf
Binary files differ.
DIR diff --git a/opus7/tgtimes7.txt b/opus7/tgtimes7.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+
+
+
+ The Gopher Times
+
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Opus 7 - Gopher news and more - Jan. 2023
+____________________________________________________________
+
+
+
+
+ Shell Redirections athas
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Newcomers to the Unix shell quickly encounter handy
+ tools such as sed(1) and sort(1). This command prints
+ the lines of the given file to stdout, in sorted or-
+ der:
+
+ $ sort numbers
+
+ Soon after, newcomers will also encounter shell redi-
+ rection, by which the output of these tools can conve-
+ niently be read from or stored in files:
+
+ $ sort < numbers > numbers_sorted
+
+ Our new user, fascinated by the modularity of the Unix
+ shell, may then try the rather obvious possibility of
+ having the input and output file be the same:
+
+ $ sort < numbers > numbers
+
+ But disaster strikes: the file is empty! The user has
+ lost their precious collection of numbers - let's hope
+ they had a backup. Losing data this way is almost a
+ rite of passage for Unix users, but let us spell out
+ the reason for those who have yet to hurt themselves
+ this way.
+
+ When the Unix shell evaluates a command, it starts by
+ processing the redirection operators - that's the '>'
+ and '<' above. While '<' just opens the file, '>'
+ *truncates* the file in-place as it is opened for
+ reading! This means that the 'sort' process will du-
+ tifully read an empty file, sort its non-existent
+ lines, and correctly produce empty output.
+
+ Some programs can be asked to write their output di-
+ rectly to files instead of using shell redirection
+ (sed(1) has '-i', and for sort(1) we can use '-o'),
+ but this is not a general solution, and does not work
+ for pipelines. Another solution is to use the
+ sponge(1) tool from the "moreutils" project, which
+ stores its standard input in memory before finally
+ writing it to a file:
+
+ $ sort < numbers | sponge numbers
+
+ The most interesting solution is to take advantage of
+ subshells, the shell evaluation order, and Unix file
+ systems semantics. When we delete a file in Unix, it
+ is removed from the file system, but any file descrip-
+ tors referencing the file remain valid. We can ex-
+ ploit this behaviour to delete the input file *after*
+ directing the input, but *before* redirecting the out-
+ put:
+
+ $ (rm numbers && sort > numbers) < numbers
+
+ This approach requires no dependencies and will work
+ in any Unix shell. https://github.com/ptrks/AVR-
+ ENC28J60-Examples
+
+
+
+ Publishing in The Gopher Times you
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Want your article published? Want to announce some-
+ thing to the Gopher world?
+
+ Directly related to Gopher or not, reach us on IRC
+ with an article in any format, we will handle the
+ rest.
+
+ ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
+ gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes/
+ git://bitreich.org/tgtimes/
+
+ Did you notice the new layout? We now can jump be-
+ tween single and double column as it is more fit: Some
+ large code chunks will not fit in a two-column layout,
+ but text is more pleasant to read on two columns.
+
+
+
+